'J^Ac  COUNSELS 
2F  A  WORLDLY 
GODMOTHER-5) 


}i/^   Persis  Mivther 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE  COUNSELS   OF 
A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 


THE   COUNSELS  OF 
A  WOELDLY   GODMOTHER 

BY 
PEESIS   MATHEE 


BOSTON    AND    NEW    YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

1905 


COPYRIGHT    1905    BY    HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN    &    CO. 
ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 

Published  September  iqoj 


CONTENTS 

CHAFTKB  FAQE 

I.  A  Counsel  from  Years  ....  1 

II.  A  Counsel  of  Grace           ....  7 

III.  On  Learning  to  Talk  ....  14 

IV.  A  Vulgar  Success 25 

V.  On  Charity  gone  Wrong       ...  38 

VI.  The  Daily  Round 49 

VII.  Counsel  concerning  Orders          .         .  59 

VIII.  A  Counsel  of  Cunning       ....  67 

IX.  An  Unpleasant  Truth  ....  77 

X.  The  Price  of  Popularity           ...  86 

XI.  The  Grace  of  Womanliness          .        .  94 

XII.  To  SPEAK  with  Tongues    .        .        .        .105 

XIII.  The  Morals  of  Social  Duty         .        .  115 

XIV.  The  Courtesy  of  Books    ....  124 
XV.  The  Fine  Art  of  Dining          .        .        .  134 

XVI.  The  Folly  of  the  Moment        .        .        .  141 

XVII.  Vulgarity  Rampant          .        .        .        .  151 

XVIII.  "And  would  my  Lady  be  Desired  "         .158 

XIX.  "Most  Rare  is  Most  Desired"     .        .  167 

XX.  Playing  the  Social  Game  .        .        .175 


1S652S1 


vi  CONTENTS 

XXI.  Leiters  of  Introduction     .        .        .  185 

XXII.  The  Husbandry  of  Family  Trees  .        .  195 

XXIII.  A  Discourse  on  Snobbery   .        .        .  207 

XXIV.  The  Misfortune  of  Foreign  IMatches    .  215 
XXV.  The  Effect  of  Explanations       .        .  225 

XXVI.  The  Object  of  Life          .         .         .         .232 
XXVII.  The  Touchstone  of  Truth          .        .  239 
XXVIII.  The  Slime  of  the  Divorce-Court           .  244 
XXIX.  "When  Love   shook   Hands  with  Pov- 
erty"           258 

XXX.  A  Personal  Disclaimer  ....  263 

XXXI.  "  When  Poverty  has  kissed  with  Love  "  265 

XXXII.  "Joy  is  for  those  who  Dare"       .        .  273 

XXXIII.  A  Counsel  anent  Husbands        .        .  277 

XXXIV.  "To  Marriage  all  the  Stories  flow"  284 
XXXV.  "A  Counsel  OF  Perfection"       .        .  293 


THE  COUNSELS   OF 
A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 


THE   COUNSELS   OF 
A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

I 

a  counsel  from  years 

My  dear  Goddaughter  :  — 

I  went  to  a  ball  last  night,  and  as  I  sat 
watching  the  dancing  with  one  of  the  friends 
of  my  far-off  bud-days,  she  began  to  speak  of 
the  time  when  we  had  just  come  out,  and 
of  the  balls  of  that  first  year.  Among  other 
things  she  spoke  of  how  different  things  are 
now,  and  wondered  what  had  become  of  the 
row  of  dowagers  we  used  to  see  sitting  along 
the  walls.  "Is  n't  it  strange,"  she  concluded, 
"that  they  should  have  disappeared  so  en- 
tirely.'^" Then  her  husband,  who  happened 
to  be  with  us,  laughed  in  the  most  unfeelingly 
masculine  manner.  "You  evidently  don't 
realize,"  he  returned,  "that  you  are  the  dow- 
agers sitting  along  the  walls."    And  we  were, 


2  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

my  dear !  It  was  hardly  polite  of  him  to  remind 
us  of  it  in  so  brusque  a  fashion,  but  that  did 
not  alter  the  truth  of  it.  We,  under  fifty  as  we 
both  are,  no  doubt  looked  to  the  buds  waltzing 
before  us  —  and  to  my  thinking  waltzing  for 
the  most  part  with  astonishingly  little  grace,  I 
must  say  in  reyenge  for  their  undoubted  opin- 
ion of  us !  —  as  old  and  as  completely  super- 
annuated as  in  those  past  days  the  chaperons 
appeared  to  us.  It  came  over  me  with  a  force 
I  had  never  felt  before.  I  had  known  it;  but  in 
a  moment,  all  in  a  flash,  I  saw  myself  as  the 
buds  saw  me,  and  as  you  would  have  seen  me 
had  you  been  there. 

I  thought  of  you,  partly  because  you  have 
been  in  my  mind  a  good  deal  of  late  from  one 
cause  or  another,  partly  because  the  sugges- 
tion of  my  youth  made  me  think  of  your  dear 
mother,  and  partly  because  a  queer  feeling  of 
self-reproach  came  over  me  that,  although  I 
am  your  godmother,  I  have  done  nothing  in 
particular  to  fit  you  for  that  advent  into  the 
social  world  which  you  have  just  made.  For 
the  rest  of  the  evening  I  meditated  about  you, 
and  about  your  impressions  of  the  world  just 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER       3 

opening  to  you;  and  then  and  there  I  deter- 
mined that  I  would  begin  at  once  to  offer  you 
the  results  of  my  observations  of  life.  I  do  not 
in  the  least  suppose  you  will  pay  much  atten- 
tion to  the  wisdom  I  have  to  give,  for  youth 
never  does  shape  conduct  by  the  sage  maxims 
of  its  elders.  Your  generation,  moreover, 
seems  to  me  the  least  tractable  that  ever  drew 
the  breath  of  life.  Only  the  fact  that  my 
grandmother  used  to  say  much  the  same  thing 
of  mine  makes  me  feel  that  in  this  I  may  pos- 
sibly be  mistaken ;  but  I  am  certainly  right  in 
fearing  that  the  chances  are  small  that  you  will 
profit  by  the  fruits  of  my  experience.  I  shall, 
however,  clear  my  conscience  by  doing  the 
best  I  can  for  you,  and  if  you  don't  benefit  by 
it,  that  is  your  lookout. 

All  the  members  of  your  mother's  family 
—  to  me  over-devout,  although  most  estima- 
ble persons  —  have  concurred  in  calling  me 
worldly.  They  objected  on  that  score  to  my 
being  your  godmother  in  the  first  place; 
and  your  aunt  Abby,  when  I  was  provoked 
to  plain-speaking  perhaps  not  entirely  justi- 
fiable,  and   told   her   she   was   a   prig,   once 


4  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

informed  me  that  she  had  always  thanked 
Heaven  that  you  were  after  the  death  of  your 
mother  so  completely  removed  from  my  influ- 
ence. I  fear  some  grain  of  truth  was  mixed 
with  their  prejudice,  and  that  to  assume  to 
offer  you  moral  or  spiritual  advice  on  the 
score  that  I  was  one  of  your  sponsors  in  bap- 
tism would  be  a  little  presuming.  Persons  of 
your  age,  moreover,  are  apt  to  be  uncon- 
sciously on  their  guard  against  the  counsel  of 
a  godmother  if  it  is  of  the  conventional  sort. 
I  have  determined,  therefore,  to  be  as  simply 
and  frankly  worldly  as  possible.  I  speak  as 
one  who  has  seen  a  good  deal  of  life,  who  has 
enjoyed  it  most  thoroughly,  and  who  wishes 
to  help  you  to  get  on  in  the  world  as  well  as 
I  have  got  on  myself. 

I,  of  course,  hope  that  you  will  be  moved  to 
confide  in  me,  and  to  ask  me  questions.  I  shall 
probably  not  be  able  to  answer  many  of  them, 
but  I  shall  be  pleased  that  you  trust  me  enough 
to  let  me  know  what  you  are  thinking  about, 
and  you  will  have  the  advantage  of  having 
tried  to  put  your  bothers  down  in  plain  words. 
That  in  itself  is  no  small  thing,  for  simply  to 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER       5 

get  a  doubt  into  speech  often  disposes  of  it. 
One  of  the  chief  advantages  of  a  husband  is 
to  have  him  to  ask  questions  of  when  you 
never  for  a  moment  expect  an  inteUigent 
answer  or  care  whether  you  get  one.  It  soothes 
the  nerves  to  force  the  thing  out  of  your  head 
into  the  air.  Ask  me  anything  you  Hke,  and 
I  will  at  least  be  nice  about  it.  I  will  not  make 
fun,  and  I  will  give  you  the  best  reply  I  can 
invent,  even  if  I  know  it  is  true  and  you  ought 
not  to  be  told. 

That  sounds  rather  wicked,  I'm  afraid; 
but  if  I  am  worldly,  I  am  New  England  to  the 
core  and  your  godmother,  so  you  need  not  be 
seriously  afraid.  All  I  can  ask  of  you  is  that 
you  read  my  letters ;  and  if  you  do  not  at  the 
time  mind  them  much,  they  may  some  time 
help  you  to  understand  yourself  and  your  own 
experiences. 

Good-night,  my  dear.  I  write  this  to  pre- 
pare you,  and  I  stop  because  I  have  n't  the 
least  idea  what  I  am  going  to  tell  you  now  I 
have  made  up  my  mind  to  be  your  Lady 
Chesterfield.  But  I  shall  think!  Always 
lovingly,  etc. 


6       A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

P.  S.  I  wish  you  would  tell  me  about 
anybody  that  is  of  especial  interest,  —  any 
man,  I  mean,  of  course.  I  shall  be  so  glad 
to  hear. 


II 

A  COUNSEL  OF  GRACE 

The  text  of  my  first  sermon,  my  dear,  was 
flaunting  itself  in  my  face  at  the  very  moment 
I  determined  to  begin  these  letters.  There  in 
the  ballroom  the  young  girls  were  walking 
with  an  uncouthness  which  would  have  dis- 
graced wenches  born  and  bred  on  a  cow-farm. 
The  stride  of  the  modern  young  woman  is 
about  the  most  hideous  motion  womankind 
ever  evolved.  The  only  caprice  of  fashion,  so 
far  as  my  knowledge  of  the  matter  goes,  that 
could  be  called  worse  was  a  vulgar  distortion 
which  had  a  brief  reign,  chiefly  among  the 
socially  doubtful,  when  your  mother  and  I 
were  girls  at  school.  You  may  have  heard  of 
the  "  Grecian  bend,"  but  if  you  have  ever  seen 
it,  you  probably  think  it  to  have  been  a  mere 
caricature.  The  shop-girls  thought  it  the  most 
elegant  and  distinguished  style  conceivable. 
I  recall  how  your  dear  mother  and  I,  hardly  in 


8  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

our  teens,  if  I  remember  rightly,  practiced  it 
one  afternoon  when  we  were  supposed  to  be 
shut  up  in  the  improving  society  of  irregular 
French  verbs.  A  nun  came  in  unheard  and 
had  the  benefit  of  our  performances,  and  al- 
though I  do  not  remember  exactly  what  hap- 
pened, I  have  vaguely  disagreeable  remem- 
brances which  lead  me  to  believe  that  we  did 
some  sort  of  tough  gymnastics  for  a  fortnight, 
to  "restore  us,"  I  think  was  the  phrase,  "to 
the  figure  the  good  God  had  given  us."  I  shud- 
der to  think  what  would  have  been  the  punish- 
ment if  we  had  walked  in  the  present  fashion. 
The  modern  girl  has  learned  —  or  affects 
to  have  learned  —  on  the  golf-links  a  stride 
which  is  too  long  for  her  anatomy,  and  which 
shows  painfully  how  foolish  she  is  to  try  to 
imitate  the  motions  of  the  men.  She  goes 
across  the  drawing-room  as  if  her  walk  were 
produced  by  mechanical  means,  and  were  be- 
yond her  control.  I  have  seen  puppets  a  hun- 
dred times  more  graceful.  I  have  no  manner 
of  doubt  you  are  like  the  rest  of  them,  and  go 
galumphing  along  as  if  you  were  trying  to  see 
how  heavily  it  is  possible  for  you  to  step.  The 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER       9 

girls  I  know  put  their  feet  down  as  if  they  were 
trying  to  repeat  the  miracle  by  which  some 
of  the  old  saints  left  the  imprint  of  their  foot- 
steps in  the  solid  rock.  It  is  simply  hideous, 
and  I  can  only  give  thanks  to  Heaven  that  I 
never  had  a  daughter.  If  I  had  had  a  daugh- 
ter who  walked  like  this,  I  know  I  should 
have  murdered  her,  and  her  ghost  would  have 
stumped  in  my  ears  until  the  gallows  took  me. 
The  modern  boy  walks  badly  enough,  with  an 
ugly  carriage  of  his  arms  he  gets  from  running, 
or  imitates  from  those  who  run,  but  he  is 
grace  itself  compared  to  the  modern  girl. 

Now,  my  dear,  I  know  you  will  resent  this, 
and  I  know  it  is  likely  to  produce  small  im- 
pression, except  to  make  you  think  me  old- 
fashioned  and  conventional:  but  consider  a 
little.  Even  your  generation,  undoubtedly  the 
cleverest  the  sun  ever  shone  upon,  —  every 
generation  is  that  up  to  twenty-five !  —  cannot 
escape  growing  older.  The  price  you  must  pay 
for  living,  if  you  go  on  indulging  in  that  expen- 
sive luxury,  is  to  become  first  middle-aged, 
and  then  —  I  am  in  sight  of  the  fact,  and  I 
know!  —  old.    You  are  able  at  your  years  to 


10  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

carry  off  a  certain  amount  of  awkwardness 
simply  by  your  freshness  and  briskness.  A 
good-natured  friend  of  mine  said  the  other 
day,  when  the  gait  of  the  girls  was  discussed : 
"  Of  course  it  is  ugly,  but  it  looks  so  young 
and  quaint."  It  is  well  to  remember  that 
what  is  the  quaintness  of  ugliness  at  twenty  is 
the  ugliness  of  quaintness  at  forty! 

It  is  no  use  to  talk  to  you  of  how^  you  look 
now,  I  'm  afraid ;  but  you  must  remember  that 
the  girl  who  strides  so  aw^kwardly  is  preparing 
for  a  middle  age  without  grace  and  an  old  age 
of  antique  uncouthness.  It  is  simply  impos- 
sible to  go  on  stramming  about  as  do  the  buds 
I  see  at  balls,  and  to  hope  to  grow  into  a  grace- 
ful woman,  with  an  air  of  refinement  and 
breeding.  When  a  woman  has  lost  the  fresh- 
ness of  youth,  there  are  at  most  but  three  things 
which  can  make  her  socially  tolerable :  grace, 
cleverness,  and  kindliness;  and  the  last  — 
such  is  the  world  in  which  we  live  —  only 
wins  for  her  social  tolerance.  Goodness  does 
not  secure  forgiveness  for  social  clumsiness. 
To  be  able  to  move  well,  to  walk  well,  to  enter 
or  to  leave  a  room  gracefully,  counts  for  much 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     11 

more  than  the  keeping  of  all  the  command- 
ments. It  is  the  whole  stock  in  trade  of  women 
I  could  name,  and  it  is  astonishing  how  well 
they  get  on.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  see  them  move; 
they  have  the  air  of  supreme  breeding;  they 
appear  always  at  home  and  at  their  ease  in 
society,  —  and  nobody  would  for  a  moment  be 
able  to  think  of  questioning  their  right  to  be  ad- 
mitted anywhere.  The  approval  of  the  social 
world  is  generally  based  on  very  slight  founda- 
tions ;  but  since  it  is  equally  true  that  its  disap- 
proval may  rest  on  grounds  quite  as  trivial,  it 
is  wise  to  take  care  about  the  little  things. 

Middle  age  seems  to  you  so  far  off  that  you 
probably  wonder  why  you  should  be  expected 
to  bother  about  it  now;  but  really  it  is  n't!  It 
is  only  an  hour  or  two  ago  that  your  mother 
and  I  thought  it  would  never  come!  —  But  I 
know  by  experience  that  it  is  of  no  use  to  urge 
this;  you  will  never  believe.  Only  I  warn  you 
that  if  when  you  are  young  you  walk  like  a 
camel,  you  will  never  win  admiration  for  your 
carriage  when  you  are  older. 

You  think,  I  have  n't  a  doubt,  that  the  men 
like  you  best  if  you  are  modern.  I  've  no  doubt 


12  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

that  if  you  could  get  them  to  express  an  opin- 
ion, they  would  tell  you  so.  But  men  never 
know  what  they  really  like  in  women;  they 
never  did,  and  they  never,  never  will!  In  fact, 
if  they  could  know,  the  spell  would  be  broken. 
The  moment  that  a  man  truly  understands 
what  makes  him  in  love  with  a  girl,  the  knell  of 
her  power  is  sounded.  Men  say  they  like  this 
and  they  dislike  that  in  girls,  and  they  are 
entirely  in  earnest,  poor  dears.  They  think 
they  know ;  and  the  fact  that  they  like  or  dis- 
like exactly  opposite  things  in  different  girls 
does  n't  in  the  least  enlighten  them.  If  they 
comprehend  anything  about  the  matter,  it  is 
not  what  they  are  moved  by,  but  what  takes 
us.  They  can  often  tell  what  will  fetch  a  girl; 
they  often  have  an  instinct  to  help  them,  I  be- 
lieve, for  they  continually  do  things  to  please 
us  that  they  are  by  no  means  clever  enough  to 
do  intentionally.  They  know  or  can  guess  at 
what  will  please  a  woman;  but  they  will  not 
to  the  end  of  the  world  understand  what  it  is 
that  subdues  them. 

If  all  the  young  men  that  I  know  made  sol- 
emn aflSdavits  that  they  like  to  see  girls  stram, 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     13 

I  should  still  know  better.  When  you  see  a 
girl  that  you  have  despised  for  being  sloppy, 
and  limp,  and  gliding,  carry  off  the  most  eli- 
gible man  of  the  season,  you  remember  what 
I  tell  you,  my  dear;   and  draw  the  moral! 

Not  to  talk  of  the  men  of  your  generation, 
however,  —  though  I  do  know  a  good  many 
of  them,  and  they  talk  to  me  so  trustingly 
that  I  would  n't  for  the  world  betray  confi- 
dences I  have  sworn  to  keep,  unless  breaking 
my  word  could  do  them  some  good,  —  I  can 
at  least  speak  with  knowledge  of  my  own 
contemporaries.  No  man  of  years  of  discre- 
tion wants  his  wife  to  enter  a  ballroom  like  a 
giraffe,  and  even  if  the  boys  of  your  age  are 
not  wise  enough  to  see  that  this  is  the  normal 
future  for  some  of  the  buds  of  to-day,  they  will 
find  it  out  as  you  all  grow  older.  The  men  that 
I  grew  up  with  say  something  of  the  sort  with  a 
good  deal  of  frankness.  You  no  doubt  think 
they  are  fiattering  us  because  we  do  not  stride 
and  try  to  put  our  feet  through  the  planks  of 
the  floor  at  every  step;  I  can  see  now  your 
superior  smile.  I  will  not  say  another  word, 
and  the  loss  is  yours! 


Ill 

ON  LEARNING  TO  TALK 

I  AM  sorry  about  my  last  letter;  not  for  what  I 
said,  but  for  the  way  I  said  it.  The  things  I 
said  were  true,  and  I  don't  in  the  least  take 
them  back;  but  I  got  excited,  and  descended 
to  slang,  and  that  hurts  my  conscience.  I  am 
afraid  I  'm  not  fitted  to  be  a  godmother,  when 
I  can  write  in  a  way  so  uncontrolled  to  my 
goddaughter;  but  when  I  get  to  thinking  of 
the  modern  girl's  uncouthness,  I  lose  my  tem- 
per. It 's  especially  unfortunate  that  I  fell  into 
slang  just  then,  moreover,  for  I  must  say 
something  about  your  conversation,  and  it 
seems  a  little  incongruous.  Let  it  all  go,  my 
dear;  and  pretend  I  didn't  say  anything 
Miss  Deborah  Jenkins  —  you  don't  know 
who  she  was,  of  course  —  would  n't  approve. 
We  will  start  over  again ;  only  what  I  said 
was  all  true,  however  I  said  it. 

It  is  worth  your  while  to  work  in  order  to  be 


A   WORLDLY    GODMOTHER      15 

clever  in  talk.  No  doubt  you  have  a  vague 
notion  that  conversation  comes  by  the  grace  of 
Heaven,  but  nothing  is  farther  from  the  truth. 
You  may  as  well  say  dancing  comes  by  nature. 
In  a  few  favored  individuals  it  does,  but  even 
they  have  to  work  to  develop  their  gifts,  and 
to  learn  to  use  them  according  to  the  laws  of 
the  world.  No  human  being,  no  matter  how 
good  a  dancer  by  nature,  could  dance  a  two- 
step  without  learning  it.  Most  mortals,  more- 
over, need  all  the  aid  they  can  get  from  the 
dancing-master.  Some  people  do  talk  glibly, 
and  even  attractively,  by  instinct,  but  even 
they  do  not  get  far  without  study  of  one  sort  or 
another,  without  practice,  and  without  taking 
pains;  while  most  of  us  are  in  the  same  posi- 
tion in  regard  to  talking  as  to  dancing,  if  we 
but  knew  it. 

The  circle  in  which  a  girl  moves  has  a  good 
deal  to  do  with  what  is  required  of  her.  In 
New  York,  so  far  as  I  could  ever  see,  a  woman 
is  not  asked  to  know  anything  beyond  gossip 
and  money  and  horses.  She  is  expected  to  be 
proficient  in  all  the  scandal  that  is  within  the 
limits  of  decency,  and  is  called  clever  if  she 


16  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

has  the  art  to  make  excursions  well  outside  the 
limit  with  an  air  of  innocence.  A  scandal  must 
above  all  things  lose  nothing  in  her  telling  of  it, 
especially  if  it  concerns  people  with  a  great 
deal  of  money;  and  it  must  be  admitted  that 
the  New  York  multi-millionaires,  as  the  news- 
papers call  them,  have  been  most  generous  in 
providing  the  debutante  of  recent  years  with 
abundant  material  upon  which  to  exercise  her 
growing  talents.  New  York  buds  and  belles 
seem  not  to  be  required  to  have  any  ideas  or 
interests  beyond  this  sort  of  talk  and  making 
a  rich  marriage;  or  if  they  have,  they  are  ex- 
pected to  conceal  the  fact.  Of  course  they 
know  about  dress,  and  they  dress  infinitely 
better  than  the  girls  in  Boston ;  but  the  talk 
among  the  women  while  the  men  are  smoking 
after  dinner!  —  If  Boston  is  "  a  state  of  mind," 
New  York  is  absence  of  mind. 

My  dear,  I  don't  know  if  you  know  Mrs. 
Trainor,  for  of  late  years  she  has  been  a  good 
deal  abroad.  She  was  a  Baltimore  girl  long 
ago,  and  married  one  of  the  Harte  Trainors 
when  I  was  a  slip  of  a  bud.  She  went  to  New 
York  to  live,  and  she  hated  it  as  much  as  she 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER      17 

loved  her  husband.  She  told  me  once  that  she 
had  trained  herself  to  sleep  whenever  she  went 
back  to  the  drawing-room  after  dinner.  She 
did  it  deliberately,  and  declared  that  she  would 
not  be  disturbed.  "When  I  was  a  bride,"  she 
said,  "I  took  to  it  as  a  means  of  self-preser- 
vation because  the  vapidity  of  the  talk  drove 
me  frantic;  and  of  course  they  all  thought  I 
had  some  sort  of  a  horrid  disease.  Then  they 
said  it  was  a  trick  I  had  to  keep  myself  look- 
ing young.  I  did  n't  mind  what  they  said,  so 
long  as  I  did  n't  have  to  talk  about  horses 
and  money."  I  have  seen  times,  my  dear,  even 
in  Boston,  when  I  should  have  been  glad  to 
follow  her  example ;  while  as  to  a  drawing- 
room  in  London  when  we  are  waiting  for  the 
men,  —  Dante  might  have  added  it  to  his 
"Inferno"  as  a  circle  beyond  anything  he  had 
imagined ! 

You  may  have  heard  the  often  repeated  say- 
ing that  no  woman  can  talk  well  until  she  is 
over  thirty,  but  you  do  not  realize  that  no  wo- 
man of  any  age  can  talk  well,  if  she  has  not 
been  for  a  good  many  years  working  hard  to 
gain  the  accomplishment.     "This  is  all  very 


18  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

well,"  I  hear  you  say,  "  but  how  does  one  learn 
to  talk,  except,  of  course,  by  talking  ?"  I  can 
tell  you  some  of  the  ways,  if  you  will  take  the 
trouble  to  try  them.  A  girl  will  take  lessons 
in  golf,  and  work  indefatigably  simply  to 
make  herself  a  miserable  player  of  an  unlady- 
like game,  just  because  that  is  the  fad  of  the 
moment,  and  with  a  full  knowledge  that  when 
the  rage  has  gone  by,  after  a  few  seasons,  what- 
ever skill  she  may  have  will  not  keep  her  at  it. 
She  will  retain  then  only  the  ugly  golf  stride. 
To  force  her  to  take  a  tenth  part  as  much 
trouble  about  the  game  of  conversation,  al- 
though that  can  never  go  out  of  fashion  and 
will  be  of  importance  as  long  as  she  has  a 
tongue  and  can  wag  it,  is  all  but  an  impossi- 
bility. 

Of  course  the  most  obvious  way  to  improve 
in  conversation  is  to  talk,  —  provided  one 
talks  as  well  as  one  is  able.  To  go  into  good 
society  and  conscientiously  to  talk  as  well  as 
possible  to  all  sorts  of  people,  to  adapt  your- 
self to  moods  and  character,  and  to  persons  of 
different  ages,  is  the  most  valuable  practice. 
Make  it  your  business  to  say  what  you  try  to 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER      19 

say  so  that  you  shall  be  easily  and  quickly 
understood  by  any  person  you  address, 
whether  that  person  is  wise  or  foolish.  You 
cannot,  in  ordinary  society  talk,  put  things  too 
clearly,  and  hardly  too  simply.  This  does  n't 
mean  that  you  are  to  be  a  prig  or  a  pedant, 
that  you  are  to  talk  like  a  good  little  girl  in  a 
moral  story;  but  it  does  mean  that  you  are  to 
do  what  you  attempt  as  well  as  you  possibly 
can.  When  you  are  put  beside  a  log  of  wood  at 
dinner,  as  will  sometimes  happen  in  the  best 
regulated  of  dinner-parties,  pride  yourself  on 
finding  out  what  he  can  talk  about,  and  on 
being  able  to  meet  him  on  his  ow^n  ground. 
Any  man  can  talk  about  something,  if  he  is 
only  a  fool  who  can  simply  tell  you  about  him- 
self. Nothing  will  give  you  a  better  standing 
with  the  boobies  than  to  make  them  talk,  and 
although  this  is  not  much  in  itself,  it  is  a  make- 
weight to  the  substantial  gain  of  getting  good 
practice.  It  is  also  a  way  of  being  entertained 
when  you  have  a  dull  partner.  If  he  cannot 
please  you,  you  may  at  least  please  yourself 
by  seeing  how  you  can  manage  him;- — the 
art  may  serve  you  well  in  serious  straits,  my 


20  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

dainty  mistress,  before  you  are  through  with 
the  game  of  life. 

I  suppose  it  is  of  small  use  to  say  anything 
about  reading,  for  your  generation  seems  to  be 
incapable  of  reading  much  beyond  skimming 
novels  for  plots ;  but  you  really  may  get  much 
valuable  help  out  of  Dickens  and  Thackeray, 
if  you  will  read  them  thoroughly.  I  don't 
mean  in  the  way  of  quoting  them,  for  unless 
you  are  talking  to  an  elderly  man,  or  a  very 
exceptional  young  one,  to  quote  would  be  to 
be  enigmatic,  and  would  simply  make  you 
seem  pedantic;  and  as  the  masculine  vanity 
flies  to  arms  the  moment  a  girl  shows  any- 
thing having  the  color  of  mental  superiority, 
that  is  to  be  guarded  against  most  carefully. 

The  reading  which  would  be  most  to  the 
point,  I  suppose  you  will  not  touch,  but  I  re- 
lieve my  mind  by  mentioning  it.  You  should, 
if  you  were  my  real  daughter,  read,  and  read, 
and  reread,  and  re-reread  the  best  drama- 
tists. That  is  the  best  school  for  conversation, 
and  it  is  one  which  every  girl  who  would  make 
the  most  of  herself  should  be  trained  in.  I 
remember  that  when  I  was  at  school  we  all 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     21 

thought  Madelaine  Drayton  tlie  most  stupid 
thing  imaginable,  and  we  attributed  it  largely 
to  the  fact  that  she  had  to  read  aloud  to  her 
invalid  father  the  old  English  dramas.  She 
used  to  complain,  although  she  really,  as  she 
has  confessed  since,  got  to  be  fond  of  a  good 
many  of  the  plays;  but  after  her  father  was 
dead  and  she  came  into  the  world,  there 
was  n't  one  of  us  who  could  talk  so  well. 
The  result  might  not  always  be  so  marked, 
but  if  a  girl  amounts  to  anything,  I  believe  it 
would  always  be  good. 

One  thing  in  regard  to  reading,  however,  I 
must  urge,  and  that  is  that  you  learn  how  to 
manage  your  ignorance.  If  you  cannot  cover 
it,  make  a  virtue  of  necessity,  and  bring  it  to 
light  frankly.  Years  before  you  were  born,  in 
the  days  when  everybody  who  even  pretended 
to  intellectual  decency  was  supposed  to  know 
Dickens,  Tom  Foster  said  to  Kittie  Crane, 
one  night  at  a  ball,  that  a  certain  skinny  old 
dowager  looked  like  Mrs.  Skewton.  "Like 
whom.^"  said  Kittie.  She  was  always  a  sim- 
pleton, and  knew  as  little  about "  Dombey  and 
Son"  as  you  probably  know  at  this  moment. 


22  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

"  Why,  Mrs.  Skewton,"  answered  Tom, "  Cleo- 
patra, you  know."  "Oh,"  chirruped  Mistress 
Kittie,  bound  to  seem  monstrous  wise,  "  Cleo- 
patra, of  course.  But  I  had  forgotten,"  she 
was  silly  enough  to  add,  —  perhaps  her  curi- 
osity got  the  better  of  whatever  sense  she  had, 
—  "that  Skewton  was  Cleopatra's  family 
name.  I  thought  she  was  just  Cleopatra." 
You  may  imagine  how  the  story  was  told  at 
all  the  dinners  that  winter  and  laughed  over 
at  the  clubs.  Kittie  was  dubbed  Cleopatra, 
and  from  that  day  to  this  the  old  set  recognize 
the  name.  She  married  a  man  from  St.  Louis; 
no  sort  of  a  match,  either;  but  of  course  no 
man  in  her  set  would  have  wanted  to  be  con- 
gratulated on  being  engaged  to  Mrs.  Cleopa- 
tra Skewton.  The  men  don't  much  mind  their 
wives'  being  fools  ;  it's  often  convenient  for 
the  carrying  out  of  their  own  plans ;  but  they  do 
object  to  having  the  fact  laughed  over.  To 
start  in  with  a  girl  advertised  as  stupid  takes 
greater  inducements  in  the  way  of  fascina- 
tions and  money  than  poor  Kittie  had  to 
offer. 

For   talking   yourself   you    need    to   know 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     23 

things  moderately  well;  for  listening  so  that 
the  man  will  think  you  know  a  lot,  a  very 
slight  smattering  will  do  if  it  is  used  with  skill. 
Again  and  again  I  have  given  half  an  hour  to 
the  book  of  some  literary  lion  I  was  to  meet  at 
dinner,  and  have,  I  know,  come  off  with  honor. 
Once  I  did  n't,  but  then  I  got  the  book  of 
another  man  of  the  same  family  name.  It 
was  a  book  on  mathematics,  and  the  man  I 
met  was  an  essayist.  When  I  found  out  my 
pickle,  I  told  him  frankly  what  I  had  done,  and 
as  I  could  say  with  vigor  that  I  could  n't  make 
head  or  tail  out  of  what  I  had  looked  at  in  the 
book,  and  as  the  mathematical  author  was 
obnoxious  to  him,  we  got  on  in  the  end  more 
delightfully  than  ever.  Frankness  is  a  great 
virtue,  —  when  one  is  forced  to  it ! 

This  is  an  enormously  long  letter,  and  I 
have  n't  said  any  of  the  obvious  things,  such 
as  that  all  knowledge  helps  you,  that  it  is  well 
to  keep  up  with  the  times,  that  you  must  read 
notices  of  the  popular  books  so  as  to  talk  about 
them,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  You  must 
already  know  something,  so  those  tricks  you 
are  acquainted  with.    If  you  know  anything, 


24      A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

moreover,  you  know  it  is  time  for  this  epistle 
to  end. 

P.  S.  The  men  you  write  about  do  not  seem 
to  have  made  much  impression  upon  you. 
Is  n't  there  anybody  more  interesting  than 
these  sons  of  rich  fathers,  who  seem  to  be 
either  colorless  or  vulgar.? 


IV 

A  VULGAR  SUCCESS 

I  HAVE  n't  any  right  to  be  surprised  at  your 
letter,  and  I  suppose  I  have  no  more  right  to 
be  disappointed;  but  the  truth  is  that  I  am 
both.  I  am  afraid  I  expect  from  you  some- 
thing that  can  come  to  anybody  only  at  years 
you  are  not  yet  in  sight  of,  —  and  perhaps 
only  to  those  who  grew  up  in  an  atmosphere 
rather  more  severe  than  anything  that  exists 
to-day.  You  can't  be  your  own  grandmother, 
my  dear,  or  even  your  ancient  and  prosy  god- 
mamma  ;  and  your  remarks  were  innocent 
enough,  and  I  am  a  prim,  stiff  old  thing,  and 
that  is  the  whole  of  it. 

Yes,  then,  Mrs.  Morrelle  did  have  His 
Grace  the  Archbishop  of  Carabas  and  His 
Highness  the  Duke  of  Jaggert  to  decorate 
her  dinners;  and  if  the  King  of  Caff  re  Land 
should  come,  dressed  only  in  a  piece  of  tw^ine, 
she  would  have  him,  —  if  he  were  sufficiently 


26  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

advertised  in  the  newspapers  to  make  it  worth 
her  wdiile.  She  does  at  least  a  third  of  the 
things  with  which  the  journals  credit  her,  and 
she  has  started  the  reports  of  at  least  half  the 
rest,  —  and  in  these  days  of  amazing  journal- 
ism that  is  saying  a  good  deal.  You  wonder 
how  she  gets  hold  of  all  the  celebrities ;  well,  I 
can  tell  you  something  about  that :  but  in  the 
meanwhile  I  do  not  like  the  faint  suggestion  of 
envy  which  I  find,  or  fancy  I  find,  in  the  way 
you  speak  of  her.  You  almost  seem  to  envy 
Mrs.  Morrelle  her  newspaper  notoriety.  Do 
you  really.^ 

Any  social  success  has  to  be  paid  for,  and  a 
still  higher  price  is  needed  to  buy  social  no- 
toriety. As  for  Mrs.  Morrelle,  —  yes,  you  do 
hear  of  her  being  everywhere,  and  entertain- 
ing everybody  with  a  big  name.  She  is  always 
to  the  front;  her  name  is  in  every  newspaper; 
she  is  advertised  almost  as  well  as  a  patent 
medicine;  she  is  the  typical  example  of  the 
woman  who  finds  a  deep  satisfaction  in  figur- 
ing in  the  "fashionable  intelligence"  columns 
of  the  Sunday  newspapers  for  your  cook  and 
your  maid  to  gossip  over.   Of  all  the  means  of 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     27 

gratifying  a  contemptible  vanity,  this  appeals 
to  me  least;  and  it  does  seem  to  me  to  be 
about  as  vulgar  as  anything  that  mankind 
ever  devised. 

New  York  has  accepted  Mrs.  Morrelle  so 
long,  it  has  so  talked  about  her,  rushed  to  her 
house,  condemned  her  ways,  and  been  quiver- 
ingly  anxious  not  to  lose  any  chance  of  being 
amused  by  her,  that  I  am  of  course  in  the 
minority  in  feeling  that  her  social  success  is  a 
pretty  severe  reflection  on  society  itself;  but 
let  me  answer  your  question  how  she  does  it, 
and  then  you  may  judge  for  yourself. 

You  know  London  well  enough  to  know 
the  streets  off  Piccadilly,  and  how  Americans 
take  lodgings  there.  Years  ago,  before  Mrs. 
Morrelle  had  "arrived,"  I  had  an  apartment 
in  the  same  house  with  her  in  Clarges  Street. 
I  could  not  help  seeing  a  good  deal,  and  Kath- 
erine  Ellis  was  staying  just  across  the  way. 
Katherine  told  me  a  good  deal  that  I  could  n't 
help  listening  to,  even  if  I  had  wished  to  shut 
my  ears,  —  which  I  didn't!  Mrs.  Morrelle 
hired  a  poor  old  decrepit  Lady  Flanbourough 
to  take  her  about,  to  present  her,  and  all  the 


28  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

rest  of  it.  She  did  not  get  on  very  well  at  first, 
even  though  she  spent  a  lot  of  money,  and 
before  the  season  was  far  advanced  she  made 
a  move  to  more  gorgeous  quarters,  and  de- 
pended on  herself  rather  than  on  weak-kneed 
Lady  Flanbourough.  London  was  at  once 
scandalized  and  bewildered  by  her  sublime 
impudence,  and  ended  by  admiring  her  com- 
plete intrepidity.  She  was  said  to  go  abso- 
lutely without  any  invitation  to  big  crushes. 
Once  she  presented  herself  at  a  ball  given  by 
the  Duchess  of  Kent.  The  Duchess  had  heard 
of  the  pushing  American,  and  had  declared 
that  she  would  snub  her,  if  she  ever  intruded 
on  her  domain;  but  the  Duchess  had  a  pet 
charity,  —  the  lace-makers  of  Ireland,  or 
something  of  the  sort,  —  and  on  the  morning 
of  the  day  of  the  ball,  Mrs.  Morrelle  sent  her 
a  check  for  £100  for  this  charity.  The  check 
was  sent  by  a  special  messenger,  with  a  per- 
sonal note;  and  when  Mrs.  Morrelle  came 
sailing  up  to  the  hostess  that  night,  absolutely 
self-possessed,  and  utterly  ignoring  the  fact 
that  every  woman  there  knew  she  had  not  been 
invited,  that  she  had  tried  to  get  a  card  and 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     29 

had  failed,  and  that  the  Duchess  had  vowed 
to  snub  her,  —  well,  the  Duchess,  who  prided 
herself  on  being  equal  to  any  emergency,  sim- 
ply succumbed.  She  said  afterward  to  a  friend 
of  mine  that  to  snub  the  American  would 
mean  to  return  that  £100,  and  her  conscience 
would  n't  allow  her  to  do  that.  If  such  an 
excuse  comforted  her,  she  was  wise  to  take 
advantage  of  it;  but  the  fact  remained  that 
both  the  "  Morning  Chronicle"  and  the  "  Court 
Journal"  had  the  name  and  the  gown  of 
Mrs.  Morrelle  in  the  account  of  the  Duchess' 
ball. 

The  whole  social  career  of  Mrs.  Morrelle 
has  been  along  the  same  lines.  The  story  is 
that  to  Emerson,  when  he  visited  Egypt,  the 
Great  Sphinx  said:  "You're  another!"  To 
Mrs.  Morrelle  she  might  truthfully  remark: 
"You  excel  me  in  cheek!"  Sturdivant  Van 
Wyck  once  so  far  departed  from  his  patrician 
calm  as  to  declare  that  she  "had  more  sand 
than  Sahara  and  more  brass  than  a  pair  of 
cymbals;"  —  which  shows  that  the  best  of  us 
may  get  slangy  and  horrid  when  we  discuss 
this  sort  of  a  woman.  It  is  n't  even  possible  to 


30  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

talk  of  her  without  falhng  into  a  tone  that  is 
rather  low. 

The  harm  that  women  like  Mrs.  Morrelle 
do  in  lowering  the  social  tone  is  simply  incal- 
culable. Why,  you,  my  goddaughter,  with  all 
your  social  traditions, — you  write  to  me  as  if 
you  were  not  without  a  secret  envy  of  her  suc- 
cess! Think,  then,  what  is  likely  to  be  the 
effect  on  girls  that  are  struggling  to  get  on  in 
society,  —  the  many  girls  that  have  never 
been  granddaughters,  and  are  bending  every 
nerve  to  the  desperate  attempt  to  achieve  a 
position  which  will  make  it  possible  for  them 
to  be  grandmothers.  So  much  depends  upon 
the  influences  they  come  under;  and  Ameri- 
can society  is  so  completely  without  acknow- 
ledged leaders  that  when  they  see  Mrs.  Mor- 
relle succeeding,  when  her  name  is  the  most 
prominent  in  all  society  notes,  of  course  the 
result  is  demoralizing.  They  have  no  real 
standards  to  try  her  by,  and  they  regard  her 
career  as  most  brilliant;  —  and  so  the  evil 
goes  on. 

For  you  it  will  be  sufficient,  I  am  sure,  for 
me  to  tell  you  a  few  of  the  tales  about  Mrs. 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     31 

Morrelle  that  I  know  to  be  true.  It  is  a  good 
deal  like  gossip,  but  the  occasion  warrants  it. 
If  the  methods  of  the  woman  do  not  sicken 
you,  you  may  advertise  in  the  yellow  journals 
for  a  new  godmother!  You  will  see  what  I 
mean  by  the  price  she  pays,  and  I  am  sure 
you'll  not  think  the  game  worth  the  candle. 
Mrs.  Van  Vecten  is  one  of  the  few  conserva- 
tives in  New  York  who  have  always  refused  to 
know  Mrs.  Morrelle.  Mrs.  Morrelle  has  left 
whole  packs  of  cards  on  the  old  lady,  and 
never  received  the  slightest  acknowledgment; 
but  she  has  still  taken  pains  to  mention  when 
she  has  been  to  call  on  "dear  old  Madame 
Van  Vecten,"  as  if  she  were  the  closest  friend 
of  the  family.  When  the  granddaughter, 
Emily  Nixon,  was  to  come  out,  all  New  York 
was  talking  of  the  ball  her  grandmother  was 
to  give  her.  The  Nixons  were  to  come  on 
from  Baltimore,  where  they  live,  and  Emily 
was  to  be  presented  first  to  the  friends  of  her 
mother's  family.  Mrs.  Morrelle  of  course 
hastened  to  leave  cards  as  usual,  and  with  the 
usual  result.  This  was  the  one  ball  in  New 
York  that  winter  that  really  meant  something 


32  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

socially  besides  money,  and  when  the  invita- 
tions went  out  and  Mrs.  Morrelle  had  none, 
she  set  her  wits  to  work  to  achieve  one.  Emily 
was  to  be  in  New  York  only  a  week,  and  Mrs. 
Morrelle,  who  hardly  knew  Mrs.  Nixon  by 
sight,  telegraphed  to  know  what  evening  she 
could  give  a  dinner  for  her  daughter.  The 
reply  was  that  Miss  Nixon  had  no  free  even- 
ing. Again  Mrs.  Morrelle  telegraphed  to 
know  what  day  she  might  give  a  luncheon  for 
"dear  Emily."  Same  result.  Still  she  per- 
severed, and  telegraphed  for  an  afternoon  on 
which  to  have  a  tea  in  honor  of  the  debutante. 
When  she  got  a  refusal  to  this,  she  could 
probably  think  of  nothing  more.  She  sat 
down,  and  waited  for  her  reward  in  the  shape 
of  an  invitation.  Mrs.  Van  Vecten,  however, 
is  a  firm  old  body,  and  no  invitation  came. 
Mrs.  Morrelle  showed  Mrs.  Nixon's  tele- 
grams, so  that  her  friends  knew  of  her  offers 
of  hospitality ;  and  then  in  some  way  —  how. 
Heaven  only  knows!  —  she  managed  to  meet 
Mrs.  Nixon  in  the  station  on  her  arrival  in 
New  York,  quite  as  if  by  accident.  In  the 
course  of  their  hurried  exchange  of  courtesies 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     33 

Mrs.  Nixon,  who  assumed  that  after  her  ac- 
count of  the  telegrams  her  mother  must  have 
sent  an  invitation,  said  that  she  supposed 
that  she  should  see  Mrs.  Morrelle  at  the  ball. 
That  was  sufficient.  She  did  see  Mrs.  Morrelle 
at  the  ball,  and  a  most  careful  description  of 
the  gown  and  the  jewels  worn  by  Mrs.  Mor- 
relle on  that  occasion  was  in  every  paper  in 
New  York.    That  is  the  way  she  does  it. 

When  the  Russian  Princess  Kachtzoff- 
Morowovitch  came  over,  heralded,  of  course, 
by  abundant  notices  in  the  journals,  she  found 
at  her  hotel  a  most  magnificent  basket  of 
roses,  —  bushels  of  them,  you  understand,  — 
with  the  card  of  Mrs.  Victor  Morrelle.  She 
asked  of  the  clerk  who  Mrs.  Victor  Morrelle 
might  be.  He  probably  reckons  social  great- 
ness by  newspaper  reports,  and  represented 
the  lady  as  the  very  top  and  pinnacle  of  Ameri- 
can fashion.  So  the  Princess  had  her  secretary 
send  a  formal  card  of  thanks.  That  was 
enough.  Mrs.  Morrelle  called.  The  Princess 
was  out.  Mrs.  Morrelle  sent  at  once  an  invita- 
tion to  a  dinner,  on  the  ground  that  some  of 
the  most  distinguished  men  and  women  in  the 


34  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

city  wished  the  honor  of  meeting  the  Princess ; 
and  then  she  invited  the  distinguished  people, 
on  the  ground  that  the  Princess  desired  to 
meet  them.  Some  of  them  accepted  and  some 
decKned;  but  the  Princess  was  there,  the 
names  of  all  the  guests  were  in  the  papers,  — 
and  thus  more  glory  and  social  acclaim  for 
the  enterprising  Mrs.  Morrelle. 

She  does  not  always  succeed.  I  have  known 
her  to  have  some  of  the  most  appalling  snubs 
that  have  ever  fallen  to  the  lot  of  social  pirates ; 
but  that  is  part  of  the  risk,  and  I  will  say  she 
takes  it  pluckily.  Some  of  the  men  say  she 
has  the  hide  of  a  rhinoceros,  and  perhaps 
she  has ;  but  she  secures  in  one  way  or  another 
pretty  much  everything  and  everybody  she 
wants.  If  she  does  n't,  she  gets  credit  for  it. 
It  is  said  —  but  this  may  or  may  not  be  true  — 
that  she  gives  out  to  the  papers  the  lists  of  the 
persons  she  invites.  If  they  do  not  come  after 
that,  it  is  their  loss,  and  not  any  diminution  of 
her  great  glory! 

Now,  my  dear,  I  could  give  you  other  in- 
stances of  the  way  in  which  a  woman  of  this 
type  keeps  herself  in  evidence  and  produces 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     35 

the  appearance  of  having  the  world  at  her  feet. 
The  question  is,  whether  you  think  such  a  suc- 
cess is  worth  the  price.  It  is  manifestly  foolish 
and  unjust  to  envy  Mrs.  Morrelle  or  any  other 
woman  for  a  triumph  you  would  scorn.  You 
keep  your  self-respect,  and  she  has  her  name 
constantly  in  the  papers.  Perhaps  I  am  too 
old-fashioned  to  appreciate  the  bliss  of  figur- 
ing in  the  society  columns,  for  I  was  brought 
up  to  consider  publicity  rather  vulgar.  In  the 
last  days  of  my  dear  old  father's  life,  when 
society  reporting  was  just  coming  in,  a  woman 
reporter  came  to  the  house  to  ask  about  some 
party  or  other  of  which  word  had  got  to  her 
somehow.  Mother  was  flustered,  and  de- 
clared that  she  would  not  see  the  creature,  as 
she  put  it,  and  father  offered  to  go  down  in  her 
place.  He  began  the  conversation  without 
giving  the  reporter  much  chance,  and  asked 
where  he  had  had  the  honor  of  meeting  her. 
She  was  confused,  and  explained  at  once  that 
she  had  never  had  that  pleasure,  but  that  she 
had  been  sent  by  the  paper  she  represented, 
that  it  was  merely  part  of  her  day's  work. 
Father  —  you  never  knew  father,  and  can't 


36  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

imagine  what  a  courtly,  old-school  gentleman 
he  was  —  wondered  if  there  were  not  some 
mistake,  since  he  had  not  asked  the  paper  to 
send  any  one  to  his  house,  and  he  was  sure  no 
editor  would  take  it  upon  himself  to  do  any- 
thing of  the  sort  unasked.  "Will  you  please 
thank  the  editor  most  kindly,"  he  went  on, 
"for  having  taken  all  this  trouble;  but  I  have 
nothing  whatever  to  communicate,  and  if  you 
will  allow  me,  I  will  have  a  carriage  called  to 
take  you  back  to  the  office."  She  protested, 
and  of  course  attempted  to  urge  her  errand; 
but  he  affected  to  suppose  she  was  only  reluc- 
tant to  receive  a  favor,  and  assured  her  that 
since  she  had  taken  the  trouble  to  come  to  ren- 
der him  a  service,  he  should  be  most  unhappy 
if  he  were  not  allowed  to  do  at  least  this.  A 
carriage  was  called,  father  put  the  bewildered 
reporter  into  it  with  as  much  courtesy  as  if 
she  had  been  a  duchess,  and  away  she  went, 
exactly  as  wise  as  she  had  come.  To-diay  a 
reporter  would  very  likely  have  described  what 
she  had  seen  of  the  house,  and  made  up  an 
account  of  the  dinner,  or  whatever  it  was; 
but  at   that   time    enterprise  had    not  gone 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     37 

so  far,  and  we  had  our  entertainment  unre- 
ported. 

Of  course  you  can  see  that  I  am  not  up  to 
date,  and  hardly  know  how  a  girl  feels  who 
really  wants  her  frock  and  her  attractions 
catalogued  by  the  press;  but  at  least  I  have 
shown  you  how  you  can  lead,  if  you  care  to  pay 
the  price.  If  you  want  to  be  a  second  Mrs. 
Morrelle,  you  have  only  to  marry  a  millionaire 
and  lay  aside  all  foolish  delicacy.  Force  your 
way  in  where  you  cannot  get  in  on  other  terms, 
and  send  the  reporters  accounts  of  your 
gow^ns,  your  goings  and  comings,  your  guests, 
and  whatever  else  is  none  of  the  business  of 
the  public.  Then,  as  you  are  much  younger, 
a  great  deal  better  born,  and  a  hundred  times 
as  pretty  as  Mrs.  Morrelle,  you  will  have  her 
consumed  with  a  real  envy,  beside  which  that 
your  letter  shows  will  be  the  palest  of  all  pale 
shadows! — Only,  if  you  do,  you  had  better 
get  another  godmother! 


V 

ON  CHARITY  GONE  WHONG 

I  AM  glad,  my  dear  goddaughter,  that  you 
take  my  letters  so  good-naturedly,  although  it 
is  evident  between  the  lines  of  your  answers 
that  you  cannot  help  regarding  me  as  all  but 
antediluvian  in  my  ideas.  You  have  been 
kindly  willing  to  let  me  exploit  my  absurd 
theories,  and  not  felt  that  any  possible  blame 
could  attach  to  you.  Now  that  you  have  asked 
me  a  question,  and  so  given  me  a  text,  how- 
ever, you  are  in  a  manner  responsible  for  what 
may  follow  in  reply;  but  I  am  so  willing  to 
take  all  the  burden  on  my  own  shoulders, 
indeed,  I  am  so  conscious  of  the  virtuous  wis- 
dom of  what  I  have  written,  that  I  would  n't 
share  the  honor  with  anybody  in  the  world! 
I  am  more  pleased  than  I  can  tell  you  that 
you  care  to  ask  my  advice  about  going  into 
charitable  work,  for  even  if  you  do  not  follow 
it,  tlie  question  at  least  shows  that  you  have  in 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     39 

your  secret  heart  some  sensible  if  faint  doubt. 
I  am  only  afraid  lest  I  should  become  more 
extravagant  in  my  answer  than  I  was  about 
the  hulking  gait  of  the  modern  girl.  My  ideas 
on  this  subject  will  seem  to  you  not  only  more 
aged  and  more  antiquated  than  would  a 
mouldy  biscuit  left  over  from  Noah's  ark,  but 
I  fear  lest  you  think  also  that  I  am  as  stony- 
hearted as  the  Great  Sphinx  with  her  bosom  of 
granite,  or  whatever  sort  of  stone  she  is  made 
of.  Most  of  all  will  you  regard  me  as  worldly, 
for  the  innumerable  idiocies  which  are  to-day 
committed  in  the  name  of  Philanthropy  are 
generally  given  a  sort  of  varnish  of  piety.  It  is 
customary  to  stick  on  modern  charity  work  a 
label  of  religion,  just  as  a  union  label  is  put  on 
modern  goods. 

For  mercy's  sake,  don't  think  I  am  flippant, 
or  that  I  fail  to  appreciate  the  nobility  of  real 
charity.  You  cannot  have  too  high  a  reverence 
for  noble  and  self-denying  work  for  humanity, 
and  you  can  hardly  make  too  great  sacrifices 
to  aid  it;  only  do  have  also  reverence  enough 
to  keep  your  foolish  little  inexperienced  fingers 
out  of  it.   For  the  sake  of  the  good  that  needs 


40  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

to  be  done,  and,  on  a  lower  plane,  for  your  own 
good,  keep  out  of  slumming,  and  charity- 
visiting,  and  the  rest  of  those  immoral  dissipa- 
tions wherewith  the  modern  girl  diversifies  her 
life. 

At  a  dinner  last  week  which  I  matronized, 
the  dearest,  sweetest,  prettiest,  most  honest 
girl  I  know,  the  debutante  that  I  like  best, 
told  me  of  an  experience  she  had  recently. 
She  has  charge,  or  part  charge,  —  her  people 
mean  well,  but  they  spoil  her,  —  of  a  club  of 
working-girls  in  some  unholy  purlieu  of  the 
town,  and  the  night  before  she  had  been  over- 
seeing a  dancing-class.  She  was  driving  home 
after  it  was  over,  —  it  was  about  ten  o'clock, 
I  believe,  —  when  she  saw  a  couple  of  her 
pupils,  who  had  started  to  walk  home,  talking 
on  the  corner  of  the  street  to  a  man.  The  place 
was  one  where  no  decent  girl  of  her  class  had 
any  business  to  be,  certainly  a  part  of  the  city 
where  no  daughter  of  mine  should  be  at  that 
time  of  night,  but  my  dear  little  girl  stopped 
her  carriage,  took  the  two  girls  away  from  the 
man,  lambkins  saved  from  a  wolf,  and  drove 
them  home.   She  said  she  could  n't  have  them 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     41 

talking  to  men  on  the  street  corners,  and  that 
she  felt  personally  responsible  for  their  getting 
home  safe  from  her  dancing-class. 

I  actually  groaned,  my  dear,  at  the  hope- 
lessness of  the  situation.  I  told  her  that  she 
had  been  impertinent,  and  that  she  had  no 
more  right  to  interfere  with  the  chat  of  those 
girls  than  they  had  to  send  her  home  if  they 
saw  her  speak  to  a  man  on  the  street;  that  I 
was  thoroughly  ashamed  of  her  for  thinking 
evil  of  those  girls  because  they  were  following 
a  custom  of  their  social  world;  that  she  did 
not  in  the  least  know  good  from  bad.  The 
result  was  that  she  asked  me,  with  the  air  of 
an  unsophisticated  seraph,  if  I  did  n't  think 
it  was  dreadful  for  girls  to  be  exposed  to 
such  temptations.  *'I  think  it  is  dreadful  they 
should  be  exposed  to  you!"  I  said.  "Because 
I  stopped  and  took  them  home.?"  asked 
she.  I  said  that  was  only  a  piece  of  childish 
silliness,  but  what  troubled  me  was  that  she 
should  have  thought  harm  of  their  speaking 
to  a  man.  She  looked  first  puzzled  and  then 
offended.  "I'm  not  a  baby!"  she  told  me.  She 
looked  so  pretty  and  so  dear  that  I  could  have 


42  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

kissed  her,  and  I  instantly  reflected  that  the 
modern  girl  prides  herself  upon  being  as  the 
gods  and  knowing  good  from  evil,  and  in 
the  second  place  that  she  does  not  in  the  least 
know  anything  —  really  know  —  about  the 
sins  she  feels  knowingly  bound  to  be  shocked 
about.  If  the  young  girls  knew  as  much  about 
the  wickedness  of  the  world  as  they  think  they 
do,  they  would  be  moral  monsters.  They  play 
with  ideas  of  sin  as  a  small  boy  plays  with 
fire,  not  in  the  least  conscious  of  the  danger 
that  lies  in  the  sparks  he  whirls  to  make 
bright  lines  in  the  air. 

I  knew  that  it  was  of  no  use  to  reason  with 
my  dear,  self-willed,  innocent  friend,  but  I  did 
have  a  pretty  serious  talk  with  her  mother 
over  the  matter;  and  Mistress  Sylvia  at  least 
gives  no  more  dancing- lessons  in  disreputable 
corners  of  the  city. 

You  must  by  this  time  begin  to  suspect  that 
I  do  not  enthusiastically  approve  of  much 
that  in  these  days  is  called  charity  work.  It 
has  been  invented  by  self-conscious  mortals 
who  are  overweighted  with  a  sense  of  their 
importance  in.the  management  of  the  universe. 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     43 

and  has  been  taken  up  as  a  fad  by  fashionable 
women  who  Hke  to  pose  as  mightily  pious  and 
self-denying  when  in  truth  they  are  only  amus- 
ing themselves.  It  is  of  no  use  to  any  live  mor- 
tal ;  it  does  harm  to  the  young  ladies  who  with 
pathetic  sincerity  or  with  fatuous  vanity  sup- 
pose themselves  to  be  doing  amazing  things 
for  the  regeneration  of  society;  and,  what  is 
of  far  more  consequence,  it  does  a  lot  of  harm 
to  the  unfortunate  girls  of  the  lower  classes 
who  ought  to  be  helped  or  let  alone. 

The  more  kindliness  and  humanity  a  girl 
has,  the  nobler  woman  she  will  make;  but 
the  more  common  sense  is  mixed  with  it,  the 
less  danger  there  is  that  she  will  make  her 
very  humanity  a  power  for  harm  instead  of 
good.  Besides  that,  I  do  think  you  young  folk 
should  cultivate  some  show  of  humility,  if 
you  have  n't  any  of  the  genuine  article.  The 
problem  of  philanthropic  work  is  an  extremely 
difficult  one.  No  woman  who  is  not  clear- 
headed, sensible,  kind,  and  of  deep  experience, 
is  to  be  trusted  with  philanthropic  work  among 
the  working-girls.  I  know  of  Girls'  Friendly 
Societies  that  are  doing  a  wonderful  amount 


44  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

of  good,  —  there  is  a  fine  one  in  Washington, 
—  but  it  is  where  young  society  girls  are  not 
allowed  to  come  muddling  and  fussing.  The 
way  in  which  you  children  have  no  hesitation 
in  messing  with  the  souls  of  poor  creatures, 
just  as  you  made  mud  pies  in  your  childhood, 
simply  makes  me  shiver. 

The  unconscious  insolence  of  much  modern 
charity  work  is  enough  to  make  angels  weep! 
You  assume  that,  in  virtue  of  your  birth  in  a 
certain  social  sphere,  your  money,  and  your 
education,  —  which  is  on  the  whole  likely  to  be 
of  not  more  than  a  tenth  the  value  of  that  the 
girl  you  patronize  has  got  from  a  common 
school  and  the  hardships  of  life,  —  you  are  at 
liberty  to  intrude  upon  the  private  existence 
of  a  stranger.  You  assume,  moreover,  that 
she  should  be  grateful  for  your  intolerable 
impertinence.  My  dear  goddaughter,  what  do 
you  know  about  the  life  of  a  working-girl,  of 
her  thoughts,  her  feelings,  her  aspirations,  her 
ambitions,  and  all  that  makes  up  her  world  ? 
You  have  no  common  language,  except  in 
tragic  situations,  and  hardly  then.  If  you 
found  her  weeping  over  the  dead  body  of 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     45 

mother  or  sister,  you  would  as  a  human  crea- 
ture be  able  to  some  extent  to  understand  her 
grief.  Even  then,  how  could  you  appreciate 
her  matter-of-fact  acceptance  that  the  death 
of  one  dear  to  her  could  not  be  allowed  to  in- 
terfere with  her  earning  her  day's  wage !  You 
would  either  wonder  at  her  callousness,  or  you 
would  have  an  exaggerated  horror  of  the  situa- 
tion, and  in  either  case  you  would  inevitably 
be  measuring  by  your  own  standards,  not  by 
hers.  What  would  seem  to  her  the  common- 
places of  her  lot  in  life  would  be  to  you  the  ele- 
ments of  tragedy,  and  you  could  hardly  fail  to 
show  her  that  you  felt  this.  The  result,  so  far 
as  there  was  any,  would  simply  be  to  increase 
her  pain  for  no  good ;  to  give  her  a  sensitive- 
ness by  which  she  could  gain  nothing  but 
fresh  capacity  to  be  hurt.  You  belong  to  one 
world,  she  to  another.  The  talk  about  equal- 
ity is  beautiful,  and  I  have  heard  it  so  affect- 
ingly  put  that  I  have  —  I  was  younger!  — 
wept  great  salt  tears  not  only  into  fresh  hand- 
kerchiefs with  point  lace .  borders,  but  on  to 
fresh  ribbons  that  spotted  with  every  drop. 
Now  that  I  have  attained  to  years  of  discretion 


46  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

I  stick  to  my  prayer-book,  and  pray  that  I  and 
all  mankind  may  be  bappy  and  useful  in  that 
station  of  life  to  which  it  has  pleased  God  to 
call  us. 

It  is  your  business  to  fill  the  station  in  life 
to  which  you  have  been  called.  You  will  find 
abundant  exercise  for  your  charity  at  present 
in  being  patient  with  your  maid,  in  showing 
consideration  for  the  members  of  your  family, 
above  all  in  winning  the  confidence  of  that 
brother  of  yours,  in  going  without  superfluous 
luxuries  so  as  to  have  something  to  give  to 
those  who  know  how  to  spend  it  wisely  for  the 
benefit  of  the  poor.  For  the  love  of  heaven, 
keep  out  of  the  slums,  and  if  you  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  clubs  and  so  on  for  working- 
girls,  put  yourself  with  humility  under  the 
absolute  direction  of  some  wise  elderly  wo- 
man. You  have  no  business  to  be  interfering 
with  the  life  of  those  in  another  station  until 
you  have  had  experience  so  wide  as  to  make 
you  able  to  judge  in  a  way  sympathetic  and 
imaginative,  and  above  all,  mature.  Do  not 
attempt  through  vanity  or  through  sentimen- 
tality oflSces  for  which  you  are  not  fitted,  or 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     47 

justify  your  ineflScicncy  by  profaning  the 
name  of  charity. 

I  wish  every  young  girl  who  unadvisedly 
plunges  into  philanthropic  work  might  be  met 
by  an  angel  with  a  flaming  sword  with  "  Char- 
ity begins  at  Home"  inscribed  on  it.  This  is 
a  frightfully  solemn  discourse,  but  I  feel  tre- 
mendously on  the  whole  subject.  I  know  how 
antiquated  and  narrow  a  modern  girl  con- 
siders the  idea  of  confining  her  efforts  to  home 
work;  and  you  doubtless  are  thinking  that 
many  girls  have  nothing  to  do  at  home.  To 
which  I  answer  with  all  the  emphasis  I  can 
put  into  it,  —  see,  I  '11  even  resort  to  under- 
scoring, that  abominable  trick  of  hysterical 
school-girls!  —  The  girl  who  can  find  no 

CHARITY  WORK  AT  HOME  IS  UTTERLY,  ABSO- 
LUTELY,   HOPELESSLY    UNFIT    TO    ATTEMPT    IT 

ANYWHERE  ELSE !  Youug  socicty  girls  have  no 
more  business  doing  charity  work  in  the  slums 
than  they  have  serving  tea  on  a  battlefield, 
and  the  sooner  they  find  this  out,  the  better 
both  for  them  and  for  the  slums. 

I  have  probably  said  twice  too  much,  yet  I 
feel  as  if  I  had  not  said  half  enough.    I  can 


48     A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

only  close  with  an  emphatic  Amen,  or  Selah, 
or  whatever  word  will  best  serve  to  show  that 
I  am  entirely  in  earnest,  and  that  it  will  be 
better  for  you  if  you  follow  the  advice  of  your 
sensible,  however  worldly,  old  godmother. 


VI 

THE  DAILY  ROUND 

Ha,  my  lady,  have  I  caught  you  ?  You  ask 
how  you  are  to  occupy  your  time  if  you  do  not 
go  into  charity  work.  You  dear,  fooHsh  goose, 
don't  you  see  how  that  betrays  your  whole 
attitude  toward  your  amateur  philanthropy? 
Naturally,  I  knew  well  enough  that  when  you 
girls  take  up  that  sort  of  thing  it  is  really  for 
the  fun  of  it,  —  'pour  passer  le  temps  ;  but  I 
did  not  expect  to  lead  you  so  easily  to  a  prac- 
tical acknowledgment  of  the  fact.  I  spare  you 
a  pretty  severe  homily  that  might  be  preached 
on  the  impertinence  of  regarding  the  poor  as 
the  playthings  of  your  leisure  hours ;  for  while 
perhaps  you  have  no  right  to  forget  to  con- 
sider them,  I  understand  how  completely  it  is 
through  thoughtlessness  you  sin.  I  let  all  that 
go,  in  order  to  tell  you  what  I  think  you  might 
do  with  your  time. 

You  seem  to  think  I  am  trying  to  make  you 


50  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

stay  primly  and  dully  at  home,  and,  as  you 
say,  "  wear  a  backboard  and  work  samplers, 
as  our  grandmothers  did."  I  refuse  to  allow 
that  even  so  drastic  measures  might  not  pro- 
duce good  results;  they  did  in  the  case  of  our 
grandmothers,  and  the  material  to-day  cannot 
be  so  very  much  worse.  I  am  not  foolish 
enough  to  suppose,  however,  that  even  if  I 
wished  for  such  a  life  for  you,  — which  I  do 
not,  —  the  wish  would  be  realized.  The  con- 
ditions to-day  are  entirely  different,  and  one 
has  always  to  reckon  with  environment  as 
much  as  with  individuals.  You  are  not  to  be 
taken  simply  as  a  human  being,  but  as  part 
of  your  generation  and  of  your  social  world. 
Any  advice  which  leaves  this  out  of  account 
is  sure  to  be  useless  and  idle. 

I  should  like  to  see  you  in  a  backboard 
working  a  sampler !  I  am  not  sure  that  the  two 
are  possible  together,  but  they  may  be,  and  it 
would  be  good  for  you  to  have  all  the  Spartan 
training  that  could  be  put  on  you  at  once. 
Only,  no  girl  to-day  would  for  a  minute  sub- 
mit to  the  conditions  under  which  our  grand- 
mothers lived.  Whether  she  would  be  happier 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     51 

if  she  did  is  one  of  those  points  about  which  it 
is  easy  to  argue  forever  without  getting  any- 
where. The  fact  remains.  Your  generation 
has  been  brought  up  in  an  atmosphere  of  ex- 
citement. You  personally  have  probably  seen 
in  one  way  or  another  more  variety  and  stimu- 
lating tilings  than  came  into  the  whole  lives  of 
those  dear,  prim  women  who  smile  at  you  so  se- 
renely from  the  family  portraits.  The  gravity 
that  Copley  and  Stuart  painted  is  something 
which  would  be  utterly  impossible  in  your  day. 
You  have  to  order  your  life  in  a  world  that 
stirs,  and  froths,  and  foams,  and  all  the  rest  of 
the  things  that  are  restless  and  disquieting; 
and  you  complain  that  I  try  to  induce  you  to 
avoid  that  so-called  philanthropy  which  your 
companions  find  a  convenient  resource. 

The  subject  is  not  a  simple  one.  In  the  old, 
old  days  when  the  mistress  of  the  house  was 
expected  to  work  in  the  still-room,  and  distill 
perfumes,  and  flavors,  and  cordials ;  when  she 
was  responsible  for  the  giving  out  of  supplies ; 
when  she  was  half  physician  and  half  a  lot  of 
things  besides,  time  cannot  have  been  heavy 
on  her  hands.      I  sometimes  wonder  if  we 


52  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

women,  at  least,  however  it  may  be  with  the 
men,  would  n't  be  happier  if  we  were  back  in 
the  old  times.  We  are  not,  however;  and  to- 
day much  that  formerly  devolved  on  the  mis- 
tress is  entirely  taken  care  of  by  the  servants. 
More  than  one  of  my  friends  have  complained 
to  me  that  it  was  practically  impossible  to  find 
any  regular  domestic  task  which  could  ap- 
propriately and  effectually  be  given  over  to  a 
daughter  of  the  house.  A  Philadelphia  friend, 
of  good  old  Quaker  stock  and  large  wealth, 
determined  that  her  only  daughter  should 
have  some  household  work  to  do.  She  meant 
to  make  it  regular,  not  too  light,  and  of  real 
importance;  so  she  set  Edith  to  take  care  of 
the  lamps.  She  was  forced  to  give  it  up  be- 
cause Edith,  good  girl  as  she  really  is,  belongs 
to  a  generation  too  independent  and  too  clever 
not  to  find  a  way  to  escape  from  an  uncom- 
fortable service.  The  story  the  mother  told  of 
her  struggles  to  enforce  discipline  was  most 
amusing,  although  it  had,  too,  its  pathetic 
side.  A  modern  girl  with  cleverness,  money  to 
bribe  the  servants,  and  the  determination  to 
have  her  own  way,  sure  of  the  sympathy  of  her 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     53 

own  kind  to  sustain  her  in  any  crisis,  is  alto- 
gether a  different  creature  from  her  grand- 
mothers, and  is  not  easily  to  be  coerced. 

Not  all  domestic  service,  fortunately,  is  so 
disagreeable  as  taking  care  of  the  lamps,  and  I 
believe  every  girl  should  have  some  one  thing 
which  is  intimately  connected  with  the  family 
life  and  household  comfort,  for  which  she 
makes  herself  personally  responsible.  It  need 
not  be  burdensome,  but  it  should  be  regular 
and  constant.  Dust  the  drawing-room,  or  be 
responsible  for  the  flowers,  if  you  will  under- 
take nothing  more  weighty;  only  have  some- 
thing that  is  to  be  attended  to  every  day,  and 
let  it  be  something  real,  practical,  and  homely. 
Personally,  I  have  a  fancy  for  having  such  a 
service  connected  either  with  the  table  or  with 
the  open  fire;  but  whatever  it  is,  remember  to 
take  the  responsibility  for  it  yourself.  I  am 
not  advising  you  to  do  the  thing  now  and  then, 
always  sure  that  a  servant  will  see  to  it  if  you 
forget.  Do  it  yourself,  or  have  it  left  undone  to 
reproach  you  in  the  eyes  of  the  household,  and 
thus  give  you  a  vigorous  call  back  to  duty. 

You  are  not,  I  hope,  stupid  enough  to  give 


54  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

up  study  because  you  have  left  school;  and 
you  should  have  some  class  to  prepare  for  and 
to  attend.  I  never  made  out  to  do  much  study- 
ing by  myself,  and  I  do  not  greatly  believe  in  it. 
You  cannot  do  too  much  to  keep  up  your  lan- 
guages; and  besides  that,  you  cannot  be  my 
goddaughter  unless  you  really  read,  and  take 
time  to  read  things  that  are  worth  while. 

You  must  or  should  go  to  gymnasium.  Per- 
haps you  cannot  in  the  rush  of  the  first  winter 
you  are  out;  but  go  back  to  it,  and  give  real 
attention  to  walking  and  riding.  A  good  horse- 
woman never  looks  better  than  in  the  saddle, 
as  has  been  said  over  and  over;  and  it  is  the 
duty  of  every  woman  to  do  those  things  in  the 
doing  of  which  she  looks  her  best.  The  moral 
good  of  the  world,  you  know,  depends  largely 
on  the  presentation  to  the  eyes  of  men  of 
beauty  under  all  possible  circumstances;  and, 
by  the  same  token,  it  is  the  moral  duty  of 
every  woman  to  preserve  her  figure  —  for  the 
aesthetic  uplifting  of  the  world. 

When  to  the  things  I  have  mentioned  are 
added  the  social  duties  which  belong  to  mod- 
ern life,  —  I  begin  to  feel  like  a  tract,  and 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     55 

shall  for  days  be  haunted  by  the  fear  of  being 
distributed  by  some  dreadful  woman  in  cotton 
gloves  and  an  unspeakable  bonnet !  —  time 
should  not  hang  heavy  on  your  hands.  You 
have  calls  to  make,  dressmakers  to  confer 
with,  a  calling-list  to  keep  in  order,  and  all  the 
rest  of  it.  The  modern  dressmaker  alone, 
with  her  way  of  fitting,  will  take  up  about  all 
the  time  you  can  spare,  for  this  winter  at  least. 
If  all  these  things  are  done  well,  you  will  not 
supply  any  great  temptation  to  the  enemy  of 
mankind  whose  business  it  is  to  find  mischief 
for  idle  hands  to  do. 

By  this  time  I  have  no  doubt  you  have  on 
your  lips  the  puckering  smile  of  self-conscious 
righteousness.  You  say  to  yourself  that  I  am 
indeed  the  most  worldly  of  women;  and  that 
in  your  charity  work  you  professed  to  do 
something  for  others,  while  I  have  laid  out  a 
programme  given  up  entirely  to  self.  Not  so 
fast,  my  bonny  mistress!  In  the  first  place, 
much  that  I  have  advised  affects  the  comfort 
and  well-being  of  others ;  in  the  second  place, 
I  am  not  yet  at  the  end  of  my  list.  I  have  still 
to  speak  of  your  charity  work.  You  must  have 


56  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

something  directly  unselfish  in  your  life,  or 
your  existence  will  be  as  savorless  —  even  in 
time  as  unsavory  —  as  food  without  salt.  To 
do  something  for  others  is  after  all  to  do  the 
best  for  ourselves.  No  amount  of  tiresome 
reiteration  of  that  fact  by  those  who  make 
virtue  unattractive  has  been  able  to  render  it 
untrue.  To  be  self-absorbed  is  to  be  unhappy. 

What  are  you  to  do,  then  ?  Not  poke  your 
pretty,  little,  impertinent  nose  into  the  private 
affairs  of  families  born  poor  and  socially  in- 
ferior; and  not  undertake  to  arrange  the  pro- 
gress of  social  evolution  according  to  the  views 
of  a  committee  of  fussy  women.  You  are  to 
call  upon  the  sick  and  the  dull  in  your  own 
circle;  you  are  to  do  the  unpleasant  social 
drudgery  of  your  own  world.  If  you  really 
wish  to  sacrifice  your  own  pleasure  for  the 
good  of  others,  here  is  your  way.  There  are 
enough  unpleasant  things  which  need  to  be 
done  in  this  line  to  afford  ample  scope  for  all 
the  philanthropic  zeal  you  are  likely  to  muster. 

I  told  you  in  the  first  line  of  this  epistle  how 
much  faith  I  have  in  any  philanthropy  behind 
your  desire  for  slumming.    I  have  become  so 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     57 

moral  in  the  course  of  this  sermon  that  I  am 
almost  ashamed  to  make  a  practical  applica- 
tion ;  and  yet  I  must.  If  you  wish  to  prove  the 
sincerity  of  your  desire  to  be  charitable,  go 
and  see  old  Mrs.  Meagre,  bedridden,  bitter, 
censorious,  but  pathetically  eager  for  news  of 
the  social  world  which  was  the  only  thing  she 
ever  really  cared  for.  Her  mother  and  your 
grandmother  were  bosom  friends,  and  that  is 
excuse  enough  for  you.  The  wretched  old 
creature  will  be  disagreeable  to  you,  and  very 
likely  hint  that  she  suspects  you  of  having 
an  eye  to  being  remembered  in  her  will;  she 
is  sure  to  attack  anybody  she  suspects  you 
of  caring  for :  but  you  will  give  a  miserable 
invalid  a  little  relief  from  the  frightful  monot- 
ony of  weary  days.  You  come  away  from  a 
tenement  house  brightened  by  the  interest  of 
a  gratified  curiosity  and  glowing  with  self- 
deceiving  approval.  You  leave  behind,  in  most 
cases,  envy  and  discontent.  You  will  depart 
from  Mrs.  Meagre's  so  low  in  your  mind  as 
to  be  all  but  ready  to  take  chilled  aconite ;  but 
the  reaction  will  be  wholesome,  and  at  any 
rate  you  will  leave  a  raddled  old  woman  less 


58     A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

wretched  for  your  visit,  and  apprehending, 
under  all  her  snarling,  your    kindness.    She 
will  never  let  you  see  it,  but  she  will  really  be, 
grateful;    and  if  she  w^ere  not,  you  will  have 
done  your  best. 

You  can  easily  fill  out  the  list  of  those  to 
whom  you  can  sacrifice  yourself  if  you  will,  and 
may  make  your  days  brim  with  blessed  use- 
fulness and  kindness.  —  My  dear  goddaugh- 
ter, I  am  so  affected  and  edified  at  and  by  my 
own  seriousness  that  I  shall  proceed  at  once 
to  array  myself  and  go  to  call  on  Miss  Pen- 
nington, who  is  housed  with  a  cold,  and  into 
whom,  when  she  is  under  the  weather,  enter 
as  many  evil  spirits  as  went  out  of  the  woman 
in  the  Bible,  —  seven  legions,  or  ten,  or  what- 
ever it  was.  I  merely  add  in  closing  that  any 
stray  minutes  that  are  left  over  by  my  pro- 
gramme, and  seem  to  be  good  for  nothing  else, 
may  be  bestowed  on  the  men.  I  have  reason, 
however,  to  feel  that  this  statement  is  hardly 
necessary,  as  I  am  informed  that  you  were 
walking  in  the  park  Sunday  with  a  very  hand- 
some man,  described  by  my  correspondent  as 
looking  "like  a  genuine  thoroughbred." 


VII 

COUNSEL  CONCERNING  ORDERS 

Oh,  yes;  what  you  say  about  clubs  is  true 
enough  as  far  as  it  goes.  They  are  pretty  much 
all  alike,  and  they  are  not  entertaining  when 
one  has  a  chance  at  real  things.  You  had  bet- 
ter join  the  Grenville,  so  as  to  make  a  con- 
venience of  the  clubhouse;  but  after  all,  the 
real  reason  for  joining  any  of  the  women's 
clubs  is,  to  my  mind,  so  as  not  to  seem  too  odd 
and  stand-offish.  I  keep  up  my  membership 
at  the  Pocahontas  because  I  like  to  have  a 
place  to  go  to  in  town  if  I  have  to  come  up 
in  summer  when  the  house  is  n't  open ;  but  I 
think  I  should  pay  the  fees  anyway,  just  to  do 
as  other  women  do.  It  is  not  wise  to  be  too 
independent;  and  after  all,  one  wants  to  help 
support  a  thing  the  women  of  one's  set  have 
started.  It  never  would  do  to  stand  by  and  see 
it  fail  for  want  of  support. 

A  woman's  club  is  of  course  a  bore.  I  never 


60  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

could  make  out  just  why  it  should  be,  for  the 
men  are  fond  of  their  clubs,  and  we  never 
really  are,  no  matter  how  we  pretend.  I  insist 
with  my  husband  that  it  is  because  men  are  so 
self-satisfied  that  they  are  always  pleased  with 
themselves ;  but  I  suspect  the  truth  is  that  the 
women  never  have  a  really  good  time  unless 
there  are  men  in  it.  Curry  Swift  says  the  dif- 
ference comes  from  the  men's  smoking  at  their 
clubs,  but  of  course  that  is  sheer  nonsense. 
At  any  rate,  smoke  would  never  satisfy  us. 

When  the  Pocahontas  was  formed,  I  asked 
Sherman  if  I  should  join,  and  he  advised  that 
I  should.  He  said  it  would  be  stupid  if  I  looked 
at  it  as  a  recreation,  but  would  be  useful  as 
a  convenience.  He  said  with  a  good  deal  of 
frankness  that  the  women  could  n't  have  a 
club  of  the  sort  men  had,  and  when  I  tried  to 
make  him  say  why  not,  all  I  could  get  out  of 
him  was  that  the  club  was  a  masculine  insti- 
tution, and  that  women  could  n't  have  a  club 
in  the  masculine  sense  any  more  than  men 
could  have  a  sewing-circle.  Of  course  he  was 
right;  he  generally  is.  I  tell  him  that  infalli- 
bility is  his  worst  fault,  and  that  if  I  were  not 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER      61 

very  much  in  love  with  him,  I  should  hate  him 
for  it.  —  This  flatters  him,  you  see;  and  it  is 
as  necessary  to  flatter  husbands  now  and  then 
as  it  is  to  give  sheep  salt  or  cats  catnip.  Be- 
sides, I  mean  it,  for  it  is  a  good  deal  of  a  trial 
to  have  a  husband  that  has  such  a  dreadful 
habit  of  being  right!  Only  Sherman  never 
boasts  of  it  afterward.  If  he  did,  fond  as  I  am 
of  him,  I  should  long  ago  have  murdered  him 
in  the  chillest  of  cold  blood! 

I  have  found  the  Pocahontas  a  great  con- 
venience sometimes,  but  I  should  as  soon 
think  of  reading  the  dictionary  for  excitement 
as  of  going  to  the  club  for  amusement:  —  al- 
though, now  I  think  of  it,  I  have  been  a  good 
deal  amused  by  things  that  happen  there  in  the 
way  of  women's  making  fools  of  themselves. 

As  for  the  orders,  or  societies,  or  whatever 
they  are,  —  well,  I  do  think  they  are  rather 
silly.  They  seem  to  me  like  an  imitation  of  the 
societies  men  have,  and  I  always  considered 
those  foolish.  Mrs.  Candace  Scott  tried  for 
two  years  to  get  me  to  join  the  Colonial  Dames, 
and  was  furious  because  I  would  n't.  She 
said  I  evidently  did  n't  think  they  were  good 


62  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

enough  for  me;  and  then  she  took  the  other 
tack,  and  said  in  company  that  I  must  regret 
not  having  any  ancestors  who  would  make  me 
eHsrible.  Was  n't  she  a  fool  ?  I  smiled  at  her 
with  all  the  sweetness  of  a  honey-pot,  and  an- 
swered that  as  I  knew  she  had  had  my  pedi- 
gree looked  up,  there  seemed  to  be  nothing  for 
me  to  say.  The  point  of  it  w  as  that  she  kept  a 
professional  genealogist  at  work  for  a  year, 
trying  to  graft  her  mother's  family  on  to  our 
tree  somehow,  because  there  was  some  simi- 
larity of  names,  and  he  could  not  make  it 
work.  She  knew  that  I  knew  all  about  it,  be- 
cause he  had  come  to  me  for  information ;  and 
she  turned  so  red  that  I  was  afraid  of  apo- 
plexy. These  women  are  so  silly !  They  get  up 
a  society  to  advertise  that  they  are  by  birth 
superior  to  all  the  rest  of  the  world;  and  then, 
after  all,  they  are  so  doubtful  about  it  that 
if  anybody  of  decent  family  does  n't  care  to 
join,  they  feel  all  their  pretensions  discredited ! 
I  did  not  mean  to  reflect  on  the  families  of  any 
of  them,  but  I  am  not  interested  in  the  society, 
and  I  don't  feel  the  need  of  advertising  the 
fact  that  I  had  ancestors.    Sherman  says  my 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     63 

family  was  good  enough  for  me  to  feel  per- 
fectly at  ease  in  being  democratic,  and  that  is 
about  the  truth  of  it. 

There  are  so  many  orders,  too :  the  daugh- 
ters of  this,  and  the  granddaughters  of  that, 
the  descendants  of  the  other,  and  the  dames 
of  something  else.  A  woman  must  be  a  fool  or 
a  foundling  not  to  be  able  to  establish  a  claim 
to  some  of  them.  I  suppose  they  are  no  harm, 
.but  they  certainly  do  not  appeal  to  me.  I  have 
so  many  other  ways  of  amusing  myself  that 
please  me  more,  that  I  perhaps  hardly  do  jus- 
tice to  the  w^omen  who  find  them  entertaining, 
—  or  try  to  think  they  do,  poor  things!  Sher- 
man says  the  abundance  of  societies  is  the 
result  of  the  fact  that  the  home  has  gone  out 
of  fashion ;  I  ask  him  if  he  has  n't  a  home,  and 
he  says  I  do  not  belong  to  any  of  the  orders. 
Certainly  women  are  constantly  flocking  to- 
gether nowadays,  in  a  sort  of  forlorn  fashion, 
like  birds  whose  nests  have  been  torn  down. 

I  have  n't  the  feeling  that  my  husband  has 
about  the  snobbishness  of  the  orders.  He  de- 
clares that  he  is  tempted  to  found  an  order  of 
Sons  of  the  Farmers  of  the  Revolution,  just  to 


64  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

show  that  somebody  is  not  ashamed  of  having 
come  from  the  stock  that  furnished  the  energy 
for  this  country.  I  tell  him  that  is  a  noble  sen- 
timent for  one  whose  great-great-grandfather 
on  one  side  was  on  General  Washington's 
staff,  and  on  the  other  a  noted  Oxford  man. 
He  says  the  princi})le  is  the  same.  That 
does  n't  mean  anything  to  me;  but  when  my 
husband  says  a  thing  I  cannot  understand,  I 
assume  that  it  makes  for  domestic  peace  if  I 
instantly  allow  that  he  is  right. 

I  should  not,  if  I  were  you,  bother  with  any 
of  the  orders  or  societies,  or  that  sort  of  thing. 
You  have  no  time,  no  need,  no  interest,  I  am 
sure,  in  it  all,  and  I  hope  you  have  no  sym- 
pathy with  advertising  your  pretensions  to 
good  blood.  There  is  no  great  harm  in  it,  as 
I  said;  but  why  should  you  .^ 

One  order  seems  to  me  a  trifle  more  snob- 
bish than  all  the  rest  put  together,  and  that  is 
the  Descendants  of  Royal  Families.  I  think 
it  more  than  likely  that  I  have  no  claim  to 
belong  to  it,  and  that  may  seem  to  be  the  root 
of  my  feeling,  though  I  have  never  had  the 
matter  looked  up.    Of  course  the  royal  blood 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     65 

in  the  veins  of  a  good  many  of  the  members  is 
purely  imaginary,  and  in  other  cases  has  to  be 
traced  through  all  sorts  of  muddy  channels. 
Whether  this  is  so  or  not,  however,  such  an 
order  in  a  republic  seems  to  me  nothing  more 
nor  less  than  pure  caddishness.  I  was  brought 
up  in  the  old-fashioned  way,  and  although 
I  can  scold  about  this  country  as  well  as 
anybody,  and  although  when  I  am  coming 
through  the  custom-house  on  my  way  home 
from  abroad  I  could  pull  the  foundations  out 
from  under  the  whole  government  with  the 
keenest  joy,  I  am  really  a  loyal  American. 
If  there  is  royal  or  aristocratic  blood  in  my 
veins,  I  should  be  a  fool  if  I  had  n't  a  sense 
of  satisfaction.  It  may  not  be  the  highest  sort 
of  position  to  take,  but  I  should  be  glad  of  it. 
As  an  American,  however,  I  am  not  going  to 
forget  that  my  forbears  fought  for  a  demo- 
cratic form  of  government;  and  I  am  not  one 
of  those  to  flaunt  the  dregs  of  some  old  royal 
family  in  the  face  of  my  countrymen  by  way 
of  making  them  discontented  with  having 
been  born  without  such  remote  claims  to  con- 
sideration.    Of  course  the  only  real  fun  of 


66     A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

advertising  one's  lineage  is  to  make  other  folk 
discontented;  and  it  does  not  seem  to  me  in 
good  taste  to  do  that  in  this  country  by  glory- 
ing in  the  lees  of  royal  blood. 

This  is  even  more  of  a  sermon  than  I  have 
inflicted  upon  you  before!  I  am  sorry.  I  will 
not  promise  not  to  do  it  again,  but  I  will  try  to 
restrain  my  too  didactic  and  dictatorial  pen! 

I  still  have  hope  that  the  time  will  come 
when  you  will  write  to  me  frankly.  I  am  inter- 
ested in  what  you  say,  but  what  you  do  is  what 
I  really  care  about.  When  you  write  about 
charity  and  ask  my  opinion  about  joining  a 
club,  I  am  glad  to  answer  you,  but  I  know 
that  these  are  only  surface  questions.  You 
need  not  be  afraid  of  me ;  but  I  suppose  I  shall 
have  to  leave  you  to  find  that  out  for  yourself. 
I  cannot  force  you  to  a  confidence  that,  to 
be  healthy,  must  be  of  slow  growth.  So  write 
in  your  own  way,  my  dear,  and  be  sure  I 
am  really  and  deeply  fond  of  you,  whatever 
you  do. 

Only  I  am  a  woman,  and  I  should  so  like  to 
know  — ! 


VIII 

A  COUNSEL  OF  CUNNING 

Of  course,  my  dear,  there  are  girls  who  make 
you  jealous.  I  am  sorry  we  are  made  that  way, 
for  the  more  we  are  fretted,  the  better  chance 
we  give  to  the  hateful  thing  to  tease  us  and 
to  put  us  at  a  disadvantage.  It  is  maddening 
how  some  girls  will  go  on,  taking  what  does  n't 
belong  to  them.  A  girl  who  has  any  sense  of 
honor  will  not  try  to  attract  a  man  away  from 
another  unless  he  is  a  real  prize,  and  then  she 
would  be  more  than  human  if  she  did  n't  try 
her  power.  A  man  with  millions  is  outside  all 
rules,  I  suppose,  and  considerations  of  honor 
do  not  seem  to  count. 

All  this,  however,  you  know  well  enough 
already;  the  question  is  what  you  are  to  do 
when  you  are  bothered  by  the  fact  that  he 
shows  an  inclination  to  allow  himself  to  be 
chained  to  the  chariot-wheels  of  another.  In 
the  first  place,  and  in  the  second  place,  and  in 


68  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

all  the  number  of  places  that  you  can  count,  I 
beseech  you  not  to  show  that  you  care!  The 
very  most  stupid  thing  in  relation  to  a  man 
that  any  woman  can  possibly  do  under  any 
circumstances  is  to  let  him  know  that  she  is 
piqued  or  hurt  by  his  neglect  or  by  his  slights. 
Just  as  long  as  he  thinks  her  indifferent,  she 
has  a  hold  on  him.  He  is  caught  by  a  hook  in 
his  vanity,  and  as  that  is  the  toughest  part  of 
masculine  humanity,  it  holds  longest  and  most 
surely.  If  he  slight  you,  neglect  you,  jilt  you 
even,  smile  if  it  kills  you.  Make  him  think  it 
is  to  you  a  matter  of  no  consequence,  and  he 
will  come  back  if  he  can  get  back.  If  he  cannot, 
you  have  at  least  avenged  yourself.  All  his 
days  he  will  feel  that  leaving  you  and  losing 
you  was  the  greatest  and  most  lamentable 
mistake  of  his  life. 

I  am  not  much  of  a  psychologist,  but  I  do 
know  something  about  men.  I  have  observed 
that  men  —  men  of  decency,  I  mean  —  gen- 
erally go  through  an  absurd  process  of  justify- 
ing themselves  for  leaving  a  girl.  They  always 
assume  that  the  girl  is  completely  bowled 
over;   that  her  wounded  affections  are  bleed- 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     69 

ing  great  streams  of  red  heart's  blood;  and 
they  get  into  a  corner  with  a  fat  cigar  and 
repent.  Tliey  have  no  end  of  enjoyment  in 
repenting.  It  gives  them  satisfaction  to  reflect 
how  killingly  irresistible  they  are;  they  take 
the  utmost  credit  for  tender-heartedness  in 
the  contrition  they  suppose  themselves  to  feel; 
and  altogether  they  find  it  almost  worth  break- 
ing off  with  a  girl  to  win  this  beautiful  experi- 
ence of  repentant  vanity.  If,  however,  the  girl 
refuses  to  be  or  to  appear  in  the  least  troubled, 
this  whole  pretty  programme  is  spoiled.  They 
feel  how  foolish  it  is  to  pity  a  girl  who  flaunts 
her  indifi^erence  to  all  the  world.  It  begets 
in  the  masculine  mind  all  sorts  of  doubts,  — 
doubts  whether  he  is  after  all  irresistible, 
whether  he  does  not  perhaps  care  more  for 
this  girl  than  for  the  new  one,  doubts  whether 
he  does  not  look  ridiculous  as  having  been 
himself  thrown  over:  he  has  to  go  back  to 
assure  himself  what  is  the  truth  of  these  things, 
and  to  make  an  impression  which  shall  heal 
his  wounded  vanity.  Then  you  have  him  at 
your  mercy! 

A  wise  old  lady  I  once  knew  used  to  main- 


70  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

tain  that  any  girl  could  have  her  pick  of  all  the 
men  of  her  acquaintance  if  she  only  knew  how 
to  hold  back  and  to  do  it  shrewdly.  Men  —  as 
has  been  said  millions  of  times  without  mak- 
ing much  difference  —  have  the  instinct  of  the 
hunter,  and  they  want  the  glory  of  bringing 
down  difficult  game.  It  is  no  honor  for  a  man 
to  show  as  the  spoil  of  his  bow^  and  spear  the 
girl  who  's  so  complacent  that  anybody  could 
have  had  her  for  the  asking.  It  is  true  that 
some  of  the  dearest  and  sweetest  men  in  the 
world  are-  so  humble  that  even  masculine 
vanity  cannot  bring  them  to  the  point  of  think- 
ing they  are  good  enough  for  the  "rose  that 
all  are  praising/'  but  she  can  always  reassure 
them  if  she  wishes.  What  the  majority  of  men 
of  the  world  desire  in  choosing  a  wife  is  to  be 
able  to  strut  up  and  down  to  be  admired  as 
being  of  the  irresistibles  who  have  subdued  the 
most  particular  and  difficult  of  all  the  belles. 
It  is  necessary  to  impress  upon  them  the  idea 
that  by  some  strange  freak  of  nature  you  are  a 
girl  who  holds  herself  not  only  as  good  as  they, 
but  better  than  they  can  ever  hope  to  be.  It 
will  confuse  them  a  little,  but  it  will  impress 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     71 

them,  and   that   is,  after   all,  the  important 
matter. 

You  must  know  from  your  earliest  days  at 
dancing-school  that  the  girls  that  get  taken 
out  most  are  not  those  who  follow  the  boys 
with  imploring  glances,  but  those  who  frankly 
and  saucily  snub  them.  It  is  the  difficulty  of 
getting  a  favor  that  makes  it  valuable,  and  if 
you  girls  could  only  learn  this,  it  would  be 
better  for  you.  A  Southern  girl  has  been 
visiting  here  this  winter.  She  is  rather  pretty, 
nothing  more,  and  she  has  pitifully  plain 
clothes.  She  is  n't  witty,  or  especially  clever; 
but  she  has  had  everything  her  own  w  ay  sim- 
ply from  a  certain  pretty  imperiousness.  She 
gives  a  dance  as  a  boon,  instead  of  accepting 
it  as  one.  She  allows  a  man  to  pick  up  her 
fan,  or  to  hold  her  bouquet,  or  to  take  her  in 
to  supper,  as  if  she  intended  a  kindness.  She 
is  n't  condescending;  she  is  simply  of  the  race 
of  women  who  do  not  kotow  to  men,  but 
expect  men  to  bow  down  to  them.  The  North 
never  had  the  social  art  as  it  was  known  in 
the  South  before  the  war,  and  a  good  deal 
of  the  old  grace  and  knowledge  still  lingers 


72  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

among  the  descendants  of  the  Southern  f  am- 
ihes. 

To  come  back,  however,  to  the  girl  that 
bothers  you,  be  careful  of  one  thing.  If  there 
is  a  girl  you  are  afraid  of,  praise  her.  Be 
especially  particular  to  praise  her  to  the  man; 
not  grossly  and  stupidly,  of  course,  but  gen- 
erously and  frankly.  For  you  must  under- 
stand that  in  the  first  place  the  man  will  look 
on  you  as  having  a  wonderfully  sweet  and 
lovely  disposition  if  you  can  compliment  the 
other  girl;  in  the  second  place,  he  is  sure  to 
feel  that  you  have  not  the  reason  to  be  afraid 
of  her  power  that  he  supposed,  or  you  would 
not  dare  to  bring  her  good  points  into  notice. 
Unless  he  is  too  far  gone  for  it  to  make  any 
real  difference  what  you  do,  he  will  be  put 
instinctively  a  little  on  his  guard  against  her 
fascinations,  critically  wondering  whether  he 
has  not  overestimated  them.  You  cannot  in 
any  case  do  yourself  any  harm.  The  girl  will 
make  him  aware  of  her  attractions,  and  you 
only  make  them  common  by  praising  them. 
You  take  away  from  him  the  secret  satisfac- 
tion of  supposing  himself  to  have  discovered 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     73 

them,  and  prevent  his  thinking  of  her  with 
pleasure  as  the  source  of  his  cleverness.  He  is 
more  likely  to  feel  that  she  has  tricked  him 
into  thinking  she  has  revealed  herself  —  that 
true  self  which  a  lover  fondly  dreams  of  as 
perceived  only  by  the  subtle  sympathy  of  his 
vision,  yet  which  is  evident  to  the  whole 
world !  —  to  him  in  some  special  manner. 

It  is  worth  remembering,  moreover,  that  if 
you  make  good-natured  remarks,  they  are  very 
quickly  forgotten.  What  you  say  does  not 
outlive  the  occasion,  and  all  that  remains  is 
the  impression  you  have  created  of  being 
kindly.  If  you  indulge  in  bitterness,  particu- 
larly if  it  has  a  foundation  in  fact,  what  you 
say  is  remembered,  quoted,  exaggerated,  dis- 
torted, and  in  the  end  does  you  a  hundred 
times  as  much  harm  as  it  does  the  other  girl. 
If  the  man  really  cares  for  your  rival,  he  will  be 
indignant  with  you,  and  set  down  what  may 
be  the  plainest  truth  to  pique.  You  may  be 
playing  into  the  hands  of  the  other  girl  by 
enlisting  his  sympathies  on  her  side.  In  any 
case,  the  balance  is  greatly  in  favor  of  being 
kind  in  your  words. 


74  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

Only  be  honestly  kind.  You  must  know 
girls  who  affect  to  be  good-natured,  but  who, 
under  seeming  compliment,  veil  the  most 
damaging  thrusts.  They  are  so  foolish  as  to 
think  they  cover  their  tracks;  but  you  know 
how  completely  the  reverse  is  true.  Of  course 
the  girls  see  through  them,  but  even  men  can 
appreciate  the  real  meaning  of  this  sort  of 
thing.  They  say  among  themselves  that  such 
a  girl  is  catty ;  that  she  tries  to  hide  her  claws, 
but  that  anybody  can  see  how  she  loves  to 
scratch.  She  gets  a  reputation  for  ill  nature 
and  sharpness  ten  times  as  bad  as  that  of  the 
girl  who  is  outspoken  to  a  fault. 

The  summing  up  of  the  whole  matter  is 
that  you  cannot  do  worse  than  to  say  ill  of 
others,  especially  of  those  you  have  any  reason 
to  fear.  In  the  event  that  worst  comes  to 
worst,  and  your  rival  carries  off  the  prize,  con- 
sider how  much  better  is  your  position  if  you 
have  always  spoken  in  her  favor.  You  have 
nothing  to  retract ;  you  have  never  belittled 
yourself  by  affecting  to  underestimate  your 
enemy;  you  can  still  be  apparently  frank  and 
above-board,  and  cover  any  chagrin  you  may 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     75 

feel,  In  a  way  tliat  is  utterly  impossible  if  you 
have  beforehand  shown  your  jealousy.  "Of 
course,"  you  say,  "I  have  always  expected  it. 
Have  n't  I  always  said  what  a  charming  girl 
she  is  ?  1  've  told  him  so  a  hundred  times.  I 
claim  that  I  had  as  much  to  do  with  making 
the  match  as  anybody."  The  girls  will  know, 
my  dear,  if  there  is  a  single  regret  in  your 
heart.  That  is  not  to  be  helped,  because  na- 
ture gave  us  that  infernal  penetration  into  the 
real  feelings  of  each  other  where  the  men  are 
concerned;  but  even  among  themselves  they 
can  say  very  little,  for  your  words  are  all  on 
your  side,  and  they  will  respect  your  art  and 
your  pluck.  As  for  the  men,  —  and  of  course 
what  the  men  think  is  what  counts,  —  the  men 
will  be  fooled  completely.  That  is  the  im- 
portant point.  You  cannot  afford  to  let  it  get 
into  the  heads  of  the  men  that  you  have 
been  passed  by,  that  you  have  lost  a  chance 
you  would  have  taken.  They  want  the  girl 
that  others  want;  and  to  have  the  reputation, 
rightly  or  wrongly,  of  having  failed  in  an  effort 
to  secure  one  eligible  man  has  many  a  time 
ruined  a  girl's  chances  with  half  a  dozen  others. 


76     A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

I  have  poured  out  in  this  letter  a  perfect 
spring  freshet  of  wisdom!  Indeed,  I  almost 
feel  that  I  am  becoming  a  Lord  Chesterfield 
in  petticoats,  and  to  pride  myself  accord- 
ingly. Do,  I  beg  of  you,  turn  out  a  more  sat- 
isfactory pupil  than  did  that  uncouth  cub  he 
wrote  to! 


IX 

AN  UNPLEASANT  TRUTH 

So  you  are  sure  that,  if  I  do  not  approve 
of  your  slumming,  I  must  be  glad  if  you 
help  a  good  cause  by  dancing  on  the  stage 
of  a  public  theatre  in  sight  of  anybody  who 
chooses  to  buy  a  ticket!  Oh,  my  dear,  my 
dear,  has  n't  your  generation  any  natural  sense 
of  propriety  or  any  acquired  modesty  ?  I  'd 
rather  a  hundred  times  you  missionaried  in 
the  slummiest  place  known  to  the  pryingest 
philanthropist  than  that  you  should  exhibit 
yourself  to  the  public  at  so  much  a  head! 
What  difference  does  it  make  that  you  are  to 
do  it  in  the  name  of  charity  ?  Do  let  us  pre- 
serve some  decency,  even  where  philanthropy 
is  concerned.  As  for  delicacy,  it  seems  to 
have  gone  completely  out  of  fashion ;  but  have 
you  reflected  upon  the  advisability  of  avoiding 
the  awkwardness  of  forcing  a  comparison  of 
the  bodily  charms  you  may  possess  with  the 


78  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

well-developed  and  shamelessly  exploited  at- 
tractions of  the  ballet  girls  ? 

Why  is  it  that  you  cannot  see  how  vulgar  it 
all  is  ?  What  has  come  over  the  modern  girl 
that  she  thinks  modesty  and  delicacy  simply 
old-fashioned  ?  The  truth  of  the  matter  is 
that  vanity  prompts  girls  of  any  generation 
to  do  unladylike  acts,  to  put  themselves  on 
exhibition,  to  do  bold  things  to  attract  atten- 
tion; but  now  this  foolish  impulse  is  not  bal- 
anced as  it  used  to  be  by  the  better  sense  of 
good  breeding,  and  the  very  flimsiest  excuse 
of  serving  a  charity  is  a  good  enough  pretext 
for  going  into  any  extravagance.  As  for  char- 
ity, they  care  —  you  care  —  as  much  as  for 
the  length  of  Pharaoh's  beard.  What  a  girl 
wants  who  does  this  sort  of  thing  is  to  exhibit 
herself,  to  win  applause,  to  gratify  her  vanity. 
Girls  will  spend  on  the  dress  for  a  charity 
entertainment  twenty  times  the  money  they 
would  subscribe  for  the  cause.  To  show  their 
figures  in  an  unconventional  dress  to  a  gaping 
public,  to  move  men  of  coarse  taste  to  noisy 
admiration,  to  get  the  cheap  praise  of  acquaint- 
ances who  mean  about  one  word  in  a  thou- 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER      79 

sand  of  what  they  say,  is  what  the  girls  covet. 
They  of  course  Hke  the  fun  of  the  excitement, 
the  sense  of  being  J' in  it,"  the  jolHty  of  re- 
hearsals, and  they  are  able  by  the  name  of 
charity  to  add  the  pleasure  of  hypocritically 
persuading  themselves  that  they  are  making 
sacrifices  for  the  good  of  others.  It  is  utterly 
disgusting! 

I  am  not  an  old  maid,  and  I  agree  with 
what  I  know  you  think,  that  a  girl  might  as 
well  be  a  nun  as  to  be  shut  out  of  the  fun  and 
to  have  no  excitement.  It  is  all  a  question 
where  you  draw  the  line.  Amateur  theatricals 
are  great  sport  —  for  those  wdio  are  in  them ; 
and  in  some  w^ays  they  are  not  a  bad  social 
training.  I  like  you  to  play,  if  it  is  with  good 
company  and  under  proper  conditions.  It 
is  the  publicity  of  these  philanthropic  shows 
that  I  am  scolding  against.  You  will  on  the 
whole,  and  in  the  long  run,  have  a  better  time 
in  life,  I  believe,  if  you  discriminate  against 
social  distractions  which  are  of  doubtful 
propriety. 

It  is  hard  to  say  just  what  I  feel  and  just 
what  I  mean  about  this  matter  without  seem- 


80  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

ing  to  be  either  base-minded  or  a  dreadful 
prude.  I  am  sure  I  am  neither.  I  have  been  a 
married  woman  a  good  many  years,  my  dear; 
I  have  been  so  happily  married  that  between 
my  husband  and  me  is  a  fine  frankness  of 
comradeship;  and  I  have  been  the  mother- 
confessor  of  a  whole  troop  of  college  boys.  I 
certainly  should  know  something  about  the 
way  life  presents  itself  to  the  masculine  mind, 
especially  as  I  have  frankly  admitted  to  my- 
self ever  since  I  was  able  to  reason  that 
whether  Pope  is  right  about  the  proper  study 
of  mankind  or  not,  the  proper  study  of  wo- 
mankind is  certainly  man.  I  know  the  male 
animal,  his  characteristics,  his  virtues,  and 
his  limitations ;  and  I  know  how  he  is  affected 
by  the  sort  of  thing  I  am  advising  you  against. 
It  is  not  necessarily  vulgar  or  unwholesome 
for  a  man  to  be  pleased  by  a  girl's  figure,  by 
her  physical  good  points  in  limb  and  shape  and 
feature.  A  girl  is  not  immodest  because  she 
likes  to  see  a  fine  manly  fellow,  and  she  is  a 
prudish  humbug  if  she  pretends  she  is  indif- 
ferent to  make  and  muscles.  It  is  only  natural 
human  nature  on  either  side.    As  long  as  a 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     81 

girl  keeps  within  properly  recognized  limits 
of  displaying  her  beauties,  there  is  nothing  in 
the  attitude  of  a  gentleman  toward  her  which 
is  not  legitimate  and  wholesome.  It  is  amaz- 
ing, though,  how  small  a  departure  from  the 
proprieties  will  set  the  masculine  mind  into  a 
different  attitude.  A  girl  has  only  to  overstep 
the  bounds  of  conventional  modesty  a  very, 
very  little  to  set  the  men  to  thinking  of  her  in 
a  way  no  decent  girl  could  endure  if  she  real- 
ized. When  she  puts  herself  in  the  position  of 
the  public  actress,  the  notorious  ballet  dancer, 
when  she  appears  on  the  public  boards,  no 
matter  how  she  came  there,  that  very  fact 
provokes  a  license  of  thought  in  the  unclean 
man,  and  deprives  her  of  the  conventional 
barriers  which  defend  her  even  in  the  eyes  of 
the  real  gentleman. 

I  hate  myself  for  writing  all  this,  and  I 
could  shake  you  for  making  it  necessary.  Now 
I  am  in,  however,  I  see  nothing  for  it  but  to  go 
on  to  the  bitter  end.  All  I  shall  effect  as  far  as 
you  are  concerned  is  to  damage  my  own  repu- 
tation, I  dare  say,  and  to  make  you  think  that 
I  must  have  known  very  strange  men.   I  have 


82  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

known  the  finest  men  of  my  circle,  and,  for  that 
matter,  of  my  time;  but  they  were  men.  Of 
course  it  would  be  absurd  to  imply  for  a  mo- 
ment that  any  decent  man  takes  occasion  to 
think  unpleasantly  of  a  girl  because  she  has 
part  in  a  public  performance.  The  difference 
is  something  like  that  between  having  your 
kitten  play  with  a  ball  of  white  worsted  in 
your  lap  and  on  the  floor.  If  she  knock  it 
about  on  your  lap,  she  does  it  no  harm,  but  the 
slightest  rolling  of  it  on  the  floor  smuts  it. 

I  cannot  help  feeling  that  any  girl  who 
dances  on  a  public  stage  is  sure  in  some  degree 
to  lower  herself  in  the  eyes  of  the  men  whose 
opinions  are  best  worth  considering ;  and  I 
am  not  sure  that  ushering  in  a  public  theatre 
is  not  worse.  The  fast  men,  the  men  whose 
names  are  likely  sooner  or  later  to  figure  in  the 
divorce  court,  are  generally  pleased  to  have 
girls  they  know,  even  to  have  their  wives,  if 
they  are  married,  brought  forward  in  any  sort 
of  publicity.  It  is  in  keeping  with  their  vulgar 
ideas  of  life  and  their  general  scheme  of  living. 
The  decent  men,  as  I  know  them,  do  not  like  it. 
I  know  of  fathers  who  allow  their  daughters 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     83 

to  go  into  it  through  sheer  inability  to  help 
themselves;  but  I  have  seldom  found  a  gen- 
tleman who  would  not  cringe  a  little  at  the 
idea.  I  have  noticed,  too,  that  the  more  sensi- 
tive boys,  who  thought  it  great  fun  for  other 
girls  to  do  things  of  this  sort,  were  not  at  all 
reconciled  that  their  sisters  —  or  their  sweet- 
hearts —  should  be  the  victims  of  charity 
entertainments. 

I  acknowledge  that  I  am  antique  enough 
to  be  troubled  about  points  that  do  not  in  the 
least  seem  to  trouble  the  present  generation. 
You  no  doubt  wonder  how  it  happens  that  I 
am  not  an  old  maid.  I  certainly  would  not  let 
a  daughter  of  mine  play  in  amateur  theatri- 
cals, still  less  dance,  before  a  promiscuous 
audience  admitted  by  fee.  The  matter  is  dif- 
ferent when  the  character  of  the  hostess  or  of 
the  managers  is  sufficient  guarantee  that  the 
audience  will  be  properly  selected.  You  may 
smile,  and  think  that  after  a  most  agonized 
straining  at  a  gnat  I  am  very  smoothly  gulping 
down  a  camel  with  the  biggest  possible  hump. 
I  know  that  in  any  company  men  will  be  likely 
to  be  admitted  who  are  not  what  they  should 


84  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

be.  If  they  are  there,  however,  they  are  con- 
scious when  the  company  is  supposed  to  be 
selected;  they  have  no  excuse  for  saying  to 
themselves  that  the  girls  who  play  are  indif- 
ferent as  to  the  character  of  the  audience. 
The  girl  who  acts  in  a  private  house  has  at 
least  not  put  herself  in  the  position  of  being 
on  sight  to  any  man  who  cares  to  buy  a  ticket. 
In  any  case,  there  are  almost  no  stage 
dances  that  are  more  than  ordinary  ballroom 
performances  that  a  girl  has  any  business  to 
give  before  men.  Certainly  they  must  be 
dreadfully  stupid  if  there  are.  She  cheapens 
herself  if  she  gives  any  dance  with  fire  and 
verve  enough  to  make  it  worth  seeing.  I  sat 
the  other  evening  where  I  heard  a  couple  of 
men  talking  about  the  dance  that  Cora 
Printise  gave  at  the  Camelion  Theatre  for  the 
benefit  of  the  Indian  Mission,  and  I  should 
go  wild  to  hear  anybody  talk  about  you  in  that 
way.  The  shape  of  her  body,  her  posturing, 
her  physical  attractions,  were  discussed  so 
that  I  had  to  get  up  and  take  myself  out  of 
hearing.  It  made  me  sick!  And  they  were  not 
cheap  men.     They  were  just  ordinary,  not 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     85 

over-refined  men-about-town,  talking  about  a 
performance  at  a  public  theatre  that  they  had 
paid  to  see,  in  the  terms  in  which  they  were 
accustomed  to  discuss  any  such  performance. 
I  do  not  believe  they  would  ever  have  dreamed 
of  talking  so  freely  of  any  girl  they  had  seen 
at  a  private  play.  Cora  is  a  good  girl ;  but 
her  love  of  dancing  and  her  vanity  —  and 
for  that  matter  the  fashions  of  the  time  — 
carry  her  away. 

But  I  hate  to  write  about  this  sort  of  thing. 
It  should  all  go  without  saying.  If  you  dance 
in  public,  I'll  disown  you,  and  that  is  the  con- 
clusion of  the  whole  matter! 

P.  S.  Who  is  the  man  you  don't  name,  who 
was  so  agreeable  at  the  hunt-breakfast  ?  Is  it 
anybody  I  know  about  ?  Is  he  really  so  much 
older,  or  is  it  just  your  childish  way  of  looking 
at  him  ?  Of  course  any  man  that  has  come 
to  years  of  discretion  seems  to  you  a  grand- 
father. 


X 

THE  PRICE  OF  POPULARITY 

So  you  think  my  last  letter  was  horrid.  It 
was,  rather,  but  the  facts  of  the  case  made 
it  so,  not  I.  To-day,  however,  I  will  try  not 
to  be  anything  but  light  and  airy,  —  but  no, 
that  is  impossible.  I  am  over  forty,  and  more 
substantial  than  I  used  to  be.  With  me,  as 
with  the  rest  of  womankind,  life  runs  to  waist. 
It's  a  poor  pun,  but  a  grewsome  fact! 

An  old  woman  I  knew  before  you  w  ere  born 
used  to  say:  " If  you  want  to  be  popular,  why 
don't  you  take  the  trouble  to  be  ?"  I  remem- 
bered the  saying  —  my  vanity  makes  me 
explain  that  it  was  not  said  to  me!  —  because 
it  annoyed  the  girl  she  said  it  to,  and  because 
I  could  n't  understand  what  in  the  world  she 
meant.  It  seemed  to  me,  as  it  probably  seems 
to  you,  that  one  is  born  to  be  liked  or  disliked, 
and  that  there  is  nothing  to  do  but  to  accept 
the  decree  of  fate  and  bear  it  as  well  as  pos- 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     87 

sible  if  it  works  the  wrong  way.  I  have  modi- 
fied my  opinion  a  good  deal  since,  and  espe- 
cially since  I  began  to  think  about  Abby 
Tilitson. 

Abby  went  to  school  with  us,  and  if  ever 
there  was  a  girl  who  was  regarded  as  a  mis- 
take, it  was  Abby.  She  was  plain  to  a  degree 
that  was  almost  a  reflection  on  the  benevo- 
lence of  Providence;  she  had  a  positive  genius 
for  dressing  outrageously;  her  gowns  would 
have  been  so  many  crimes,  if  they  had  n't  been 
so  pathetic  in  the  evidence  that  they  were  well 
intended ;  she  had  no  more  conversation  than 
a  toad  in  a  hole ;  and  the  only  thing  that  could 
ever  be  said  in  her  favor  when  she  was  at 
school  was  that  she  was  clever  and  good-na- 
tured. How  she  got  started  on  the  right  track, 
I  never  knew ;  and  I  could  n't  have  believed 
that  any  live  girl  would  have  had  the  perse- 
verance to  stick  to  it  and  work  out  her  salva- 
tion the  way  she  did.  I  never  think  of  what 
she  did  under  her  disadvantages  without  being 
ashamed  to  remember  what  the  rest  of  us 
accomplished  with  all  our  advantages. 

You  want  to  know,  of  course,  what  she  did 


88  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

and  how  she  did  it.    I  can't  begin  to  tell  you 
anything  more  than  the  marked  things,  when 
of  course  trifles  really  counted  most.      She 
made  a  regular  study  of  dress.  She  read  about 
it,  and  she  studied  pictures;  she  took  lessons 
in   drawing   and   water-colors   for   no   other 
earthly  thing  than  just  to  learn  how  to  dress 
herself.    She  learned  to  give  up  the  idea  that 
what  she  wanted  w  as  what  she  ought  to  wear. 
It's  a  great  thing  when  a  woman  comes  to 
realize  that  she  really  does  n't  know  anything 
about  clothing  herself,  but  must  go  to  work  to 
learn!    Abby  was  always   good-natured,  and 
of  course  that  counted  for  a  lot.     She  was 
forced,   poor  thing,  —  only   I   ought   to   say 
lucky  thing !  —  to  think  of  others  because  she 
knew  she  had  her  way  to  win.   By  thinking  of 
what  others  liked  or  wanted  she  came  to  be 
wonderfully  sympathetic.     The  men  used  to 
confide  everything  to  her,  and  we  poor  fools 
decided  among  ourselves  that  Abby  was  to  be 
a  nice  old  maid,  hearing  the  love  affairs  of  suc- 
cessive generations,  but  having  none  of  her 
own.  We  knew  she  was  in  a  position  to  have  a 
lot  of  influence  with  the  men,  for  of  course  she 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     89 

could  affect  what  they  thought  of  us,  and  we 
all  made  a  point  of  being  nice  to  her.  Indeed, 
we  all  found  ourselves  being  fond  of  her  with- 
out knowing  how  we  came  to  be  so.  She  was 
clever,  I  said  before.  She  worked  like  a  galley 
slave  at  French  and  Italian  and  her  music.  If 
a  foreigner  came,  Abby  was  naturally  invited 
to  talk  with  him,  and  she  kept  herself  up  in 
all  that  was  going  on.  She  took  foreign  papers 
and  read  foreign  books,  and,  but  oh  my,  how 
that  girl  did  work! 

Abby  had  n't  money  enough  to  entertain 
much,  but  she  invented  all  sorts  of  little 
things  for  the  dinners  and  the  dances  of  her 
friends,  and  of  course  a  good  many  times  she 
got  the  credit  of  it.  She  went  to  a  gymnasium, 
and  she  took  lessons  from  a  music  teacher  to 
learn  to  laugh  well.  She  was  simply  a  wonder. 
It  all  went  on  so  quietly,  too,  that  we  thought 
nothing  of  it.  We  only  said  now  and  then  how 
much  she  had  improved.  We  thought  what  a 
pleasant  old  maid  she  was  going  to  make,  — 
when  one  fine  day  her  engagement  was  an- 
nounced to  George  Whittington,  the  richest, 
handsomest,  most  desirable,  the  most  alto- 


90  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

gether  lovely  catch  of  half  a  dozen  years.  We 
were  simply  as  flat  as  a  dandelion  that  the 
lawn-roller's  gone  over!— Only  you  know 
girls  have  a  sense  of  justice,  if  they'll  own  up, 
and  all  of  us  who  'd  been  throwing  ourselves  at 
George  Whittington's  head  had  to  own  that 
she  really  deserved  him. 

My  dear,  that  taught  me  a  lesson.  Fortu- 
nately, I  did  n't  care  about  George  Whitting- 
ton  in  any  other  way  than  for  the  fun  of  beat- 
ing the  rest  of  the  girls,  and  even  then  I  had 
a  sneaking  affection  down  deep  inside  of  me 
that  would  n't  have  let  me  marry  anybody  but 
the  man  I  did;  —  only  I  should  have  liked  the 
fun  of  carrying  George  off!  But  I  realized 
then  as  I  never  had  before  how  much  lies  in  the 
power  of  a  girl  who  has  the  grit  to  make  the 
most  of  herself.  I  knew  what  my  old  friend 
meant  about  taking  the  trouble  to  be  popular. 

Of  course  I  have  n't  given  you  a  fair  idea  of 
the  way  Abby  improved  herself.  The  most 
important  thing  I  haven't  even  mentioned; 
that  is,  that  she  set  herself  to  earn  everything 
she  had.  Every  one  of  us  is  more  or  less  in  the 
habit  of  taking  what  we  can  get  in  the  way  of 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     91 

attention  and  so  on,  without  bothering  to  con- 
sider whether  it  is  our  due  or  not.  Abby  made 
it  a  point  to  deserve  every  Httlest  thing.  If  you 
think  of  it,  you  will  see  how  constantly  you 
presume  on  your  good  looks,  your  position, 
your  money,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  to  bring  you 
things  you  would  never  expect  if  you  were  not 
a  social  success.  To  a  certain  extent  this  is 
inevitable,  and  you  are  lucky  to  be  in  a  posi- 
tion where  you  have  so  much  to  presume  on. 
To  a  certain  extent,  too,  it  is  proper.  A  girl 
who  does  n't  let  it  be  understood  that  she 
realizes  her  social  rights  will  end  by  having 
very  little  to  realize. 

I  wonder  people  are  so  seldom  frank  about 
this  sort  of  thing.  We  all  have  a  feeling  that 
the  ideal  nobility  is  that  which  has  no  need  to 
be  assertive,  and  it  grates  on  our  republicanly 
aristocratic  nerves  to  read  or  to  hear  of  the 
struggles  of  royalty  over  questions  of  prece- 
dence. That  is  all  very  well,  if  social  standing 
did  n't  have  two  sides  to  it.  The  aristocracy 
has  to  be  recognized,  or  it  is  n't  aristocracy. 
Eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of  social  pre- 
eminence.    It  sounds  vulgar  when  it  is  put 


92  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

baldly,  but  the  fine  old  grande  dame  of  the 
romance  that  embodies  our  democratic  ideal 
would  never  for  a  moment  forget  what  was 
due  to  her,  or  allow  the  least  infringement  on 
the  privileges  of  her  rank.  In  daily  life  you 
may  decide  that  the  game  is  not  worth  the  can- 
dle, but  unless  you  retire  from  the  world  and 
live  where  you  've  no  social  equals,  you  must  to 
a  greater  or  less  degree  struggle  to  hold  your 
own.  The  prince,  or  the  private  person,  who 
consents  to  be  thrust  into  the  background  by 
vulgar  pushers  very  soon  finds  himself  in  that 
undesirable  position.  I  think  myself  that  if  we 
are  to  pray  to  be  given  grace  to  be  contented 
in  that  station  in  life  to  which  it  has  pleased 
God  to  call  us,  we  owe  it  to  ourselves  and  to 
society  not  to  fall  below  it.  You  have  to  insist 
on  the  respect  of  servants  if  you  wish  to  pre- 
serve it ;  and  in  the  same  way  you  have  to  let 
it  be  known  that  you  expect  and  demand  cer- 
tain social  rights  and  recognition,  certain  just 
consideration,  as  a  matter  of  deference  to  your 
standing  in  society. 

The  point  is,  of  course,  the  way  this  is  done. 
The  stamp  of  breeding  is  to  do  it  delicately. 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     93 

The  ideal  is  that  this  insistence  is  never  want- 
ing, but  never  evident.  The  vulgar  person  is 
one  who  claims  what  he  has  no  right  to,  and 
who,  moreover,  lets  his  insistence  be  seen.  —  I 
have  got  pretty  far  away  from  Abby,  some- 
how, and  I  must  stop  writing;  but  she  was  a 
wonderful  instance  of  a  person  who  earned 
the  right  to  social  consideration,  and  then  got 
it  and  took  it.  There's  a  beautiful  moral  in 
this,  if  I  had  n't  tangled  it  all  up!    Good-by. 


XI 

THE  GRACE  OF  WOMANLINESS 

I  AM  not  trying  to  persuade  you  to  be  different 
from  all  your  friends.  Of  course  a  girl  must 
on  the  whole  do  pretty  much  what  her  mates 
do,  or  she  will  be  set  down  as  odd  and  all  the 
rest  of  it,  and  treated  accordingly.  I  under- 
stand exactly  what  you  mean,  and  I  sympa- 
thize with  you.  Your  mates  make  up  your 
world,  and  what  you  or  I  or  any  other  human 
being  really  cares  about  is  the  opinion  of  his 
own  world,  no  matter  what  that  world  may  be. 
An  old  diplomat  took  me  in  to  dinner  last 
night,  and  I  was  amused  to  see  how  completely 
he  put  all  the  rest  of  mankind  aside,  and 
cared  only  what  was  thought  of  him  in  diplo- 
matic circles.  I  told  him  that  he  evidently  had 
no  especial  regard  for  the  opinion  of  the 
people,  either  of  our  country  or  his  own. 

"Why  should  I  have.?"  he  asked,  with  the 
greatest  frankness.   "What  does  anybody  but 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     95 

a  diplomat  know  about  diplomacy?  You  are 
a  clever  woman,  but  what  can  you  understand 
of  the  finesse  of  diplomatic  negotiations?" 

"Only  what  you  are  good  enough  to  tell 
me,"  I  admitted. 

"Just  so.  That's  exactly  it.  You  know 
what  I  or  some  other  man  in  the  diplomatic 
circle  chooses  to  explain.  That  is  the  way  with 
the  public;  and  of  course  we  should  explain 
far  less  to  the  public  than  to  you.  Why  should 
I  care  what  the  public,  or  even  so  clever  a  wo- 
man as  you,  happens  to  think  about  the  man- 
agement of  delicate  negotiations  ?  Of  course 
we  all  wish  to  be  thought  well  of,  and  I  always 
put  things  so  as  to  stand  as  high  in  your  esti- 
mation as  possible:  that's  part  of  diplomacy; 
but  why  should  I  care  for  an  estimate  which 
must  depend  not  upon  what  we  do,  but  on  the 
way  we  represent  what  we  have  done  to  per- 
sons who  do  not  really  —  if  you  will  pardon 
me  —  understand  ?  " 

The  more  you  think  of  this,  the  more  evi- 
dent it  is,  and  the  more  general  is  the  appli- 
cation. We  regard  the  opinion  of  our  own 
world,  because  our  own  world  is  the  only  one 


9G  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

that  can  really  understand.  We  cannot  make 
ourselves  care  very  seriously  for  anything  out- 
side. You  like  me  to  think  well  of  you,  and 
you  have,  I  dare  say,  a  very  flattering  esti- 
mate of  my  judgment;  but  if  you  thought  me 
a  Solomon  in  petticoats  and  a  Queen  of  Sheba 
rolled  into  one  with  him,  you'd  inevitably 
come  back  in  your  mind  to  what  the  girls  of 
your  set  think.  It  is  their  view  you  wish  to 
know  ;  their  approbation  is  the  only  thing 
that  can  satisfy  you.  You  can't  help  it,  and  I 
am  not  in  the  least  sure  that  you  would  be  any 
better  ofi^  if  you  could  and  did.  You  stand  or 
fall  by  their  opinion  because  you  are  of  them 
and  of  their  world. 

Well,  then,  you  ask  how  you  are  to  be  so 
different  from  them  and  yet  keep  in  with  them, 
have  their  respect,  —  or  their  admiration,  for 
which  at  your  age  you  very  likely  care  a  good 
deal  more.  You  seem  to  feel  that  I  am  advis- 
ing you  to  come  out  from  them,  and  to  be  so 
different  that  they  will  regard  you  as  half  alien. 
Nothing  could  be  farther  from  what  I  mean. 
It  is  true  that  certain  things  which  are  com- 
mon I  most  earnestly  advise  you  to  avoid ;  but 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     97 

I  have  carefully  said  that  it  would  be  wise  to 
do  some  of  them  in  moderation,  and  others  I 
am  sure  would  be  condemned  by  the  under- 
lying feeling  of  every  girl  at  all  well-bred,  so 
that  after  all  you  would  be  respected  for  keep- 
ing clear  of  them.  You  would  even  be  secretly 
if  not  openly  approved  by  the  very  girls  who 
protest  most  against  the  stiffness  and  narrow- 
ness of  anybody  who  ventures  to  speak  out 
against  the  unmaidenly  tricks  which  disfigure 
too  many  of  our  modern  young  ladies. 

You  very  likely  heard  rumors  a  few  years 
ago  of  the  wave  of  vulgarity  which  swept  over 
Boston  society  in  the  form  of  the  outrageously 
underbred  performances  of  the  buds  of  the 
year.  The  girls  who  came  out  that  winter 
were  for  the  most  part  born  and  bred  in  fami- 
lies where  courtesy  is  one  of  the  cardinal  vir- 
tues, and  yet  the  town  —  and,  for  that  matter, 
other  towns  —  rang  with  their  hoidenish  and 
vulgar  antics.  Of  course  the  things  most 
talked  about  are  always  the  work  of  very  few. 
If  a  girl  should  dance  the  can-can  in  the  mid- 
dle of  a  ballroom,  or  fling  a  hymn-book  at  a 
friend  in  church,  the  chatter  about  such  per- 


98  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

formances  would  be  enough  to  convince  one 
ignorant  of  the  truth  that  all  society  was  going 
at  once  to  the  bad.  Very  likely  it  would  be 
true  that  society  must  be  in  a  pretty  bad  case 
before  a  girl  would  come  to  the  point  of  doing 
anything  so  outrageous;  for,  after  all,  we  wo- 
men have  an  instinctive  sense  of  what  the  cir- 
cle in  which  we  move  will  put  up  with,  and  the 
worst  hoiden  that  ever  lived  had  consciously 
or  unconsciously  one  eye  out  for  the  effect  she 
was  producing.  The  girls  who  do  the  things 
that  have  what  might  be  called  a  succes  de 
scandale  are  not  really  the  most  important  or 
the  most  successful  of  a  season,  but  merely 
those  who  have  sacrificed  their  good  name 
to  notoriety.  They  have  their  little  hour  of 
intoxication,  —  on  very  poor  tipple,  too,  I 
should  say!  —  and  if  they  are  of  any  genuine 
character,  they  must  soon  come  to  be  ashamed 
of  acts  which  would  hardly  be  possible  among 
shop-girls. 

Now  the  question  is,  how  far  girls  who  do 
ill-bred  pranks  are  approved  by  their  own 
mates.  You  certainly  would  not  think  of  join- 
ing the  ranks  of  those  who  get  talked  about  for 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER     99 

this  sort  of  thing  ;  and  these  girls  are  really 
condemned  by  their  peers,  if  not  so  openly  or 
so  emphatically  as  by  their  elders,  yet  none  the 
less  surely.  The  question  comes,  don't  you 
see,  as  to  where  the  line  is  to  be  drawn  be- 
tween the  acts  your  contemporaries  approve 
and  those  they  only  tolerate.  I  am  not  advis- 
ing you  to  be  singular,  except  in  ways  that  will 
of  themselves  so  command  admiration  or  re- 
spect that  you  can  afford  to  persist  in  them, 
no  matter  if  you  are  the  only  girl  who  has  the 
sense  to  see  that  they  are  proper.  The  extrava- 
gant, the  bizarre,  the  vulgar,  are  always  most 
in  evidence;  but  I  am  far  from  being  willing 
to  allow  that  they  therefore  are  most  charac- 
teristic, or  most  likely  to  be  indorsed.  I  believe 
you  can  depend  on  the  ultimate  good  sense 
and  good  breeding  of  any  set  to  which  there  is 
any  possibility  of  your  belonging. 

You  are  sure,  moreover,  to  have  a  private 
standard.  You  will  inevitably  select  among 
the  girls  you  know  certain  ones  for  whose 
opinions  you  really  care,  even  though  you  see 
them  to  be  in  a  minority  against  the -mass  of 
your  associates.   All  that  I  have  ever  urged  is 


100  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

that  you  carry  yourself  so  as  to  deserve  the 
respect  of  those  of  your  peers  whose  opinion 
is  best  worth  while.  Of  course  you  must  be 
like  the  girls  of  your  generation,  —  but  like 
which  girls,  the  best  or  the  worst  ? 

In  the  long  run,  too,  the  opinion  even  of  you 
girls  is  that  of  your  elders.  You  damsels  sup- 
pose, with  the  feeling  of  superiority  of  youth 
that  is  one  of  its  most  enviable  qualities  and 
its  most  adorable  errors,  that  you  make  your 
own  judgments,  and  hold  to  them  entirely 
uninfluenced  by  the  views  of  those  older  and 
more  experienced.  You  will  very  likely  not 
believe  me  when  I  say  that  this  is  an  utter 
delusion.  You  will  tell  yourself  that  of  course 
I  think  so  because  I  am  one  of  the  elders  afore- 
said ;  but  that  old  people  —  we  are  all  old  to 
you !  —  cannot  understand  the  girls  of  your 
generation.  You  are  sure  you  are  different, 
very  different,  amazingly  different,  from  any 
generation  of  girls  that  ever  went  before  you. 
Bless  your  dear  hearts!  We  thought  so,  and 
your  daughters  will  think  so ;  and  to  the  end  of 
time  youth  will  always  suppose  that  it  is  so 
new  and  so  wise  that  age  cannot  begin  to  enter 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    101 

into  its  subtilties.  Yet  in  spite  of  this  you  are 
shaped  and  moulded  by  the  opinions  and  the 
standards  of  the  very  generation  you  suppose 
to  be  having  no  influence  on  you  at  all. 

This  being  so,  it  follows  that  in  the  end  you 
are  likely  to  look  back  and  regret  those  things 
by  which  you  have  outraged  the  proprieties  as 
set  forth  by  your  elders;  and  it  is  wiser,  in  a 
world  where  a  good  deal  of  regret  is  inevitable, 
no  matter  how  hard  we  try  to  avoid  it,  to  save 
yourself  from  regrets  that  are  useless,  and 
which  have  been  purchased  with  so  little  real 
enjoyment. 

This  I  do  not  dwell  upon,  because  you  can- 
not fully  enter  into  my  feeling  on  the  subject; 
but  at  the  risk  of  moralizing,  I  must  say  that, 
after  all,  even  judgment  by  your  peers  gives 
place  to  judgment  by  yourself.  Self-respect  is 
a  possession  too  precious  to  be  parted  with  at 
any  price  that  I  have  ever  seen  offered.  Don't 
set  me  down  as  an  old  goose  when  I  say  that, 
with  your  lineage  and  training,  you  will  find 
that  the  things  I  have  urged  you  to  steer  clear 
of  are  only  those  that  you  could  not  do  with- 
out being  ashamed  of  having  fallen  below  the 


102  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

standard  that  it  is  in  your  blood  to  demand  of 
yourself. 

There  is  one  thing  more.  —  I  had  in  my 
youth  a  great-aunt,  a  terrible  great-aunt,  who 
did  her  duty  by  me  with  a  firmness  worthy  of 
an  old  Puritan.  She  snubbed  me  so  that  I  am 
convinced  I  am  mentally  inches  shorter  than 
I  should  have  been  if  great-aunt  Tabitha  had 
not  so  persistently  trampled  on  my  youthful 
inclinations.  She  told  me  once,  looking  over 
her  spectacles  with  her  hard  gray  eyes,  —  a 
sort  of  pale  whitish-green-gray,  you  know, 
like  the  flat  moss  on  a  rail-fence  in  the  coun- 
try: how  I  did  hate  great-aunt  Tabitha  and 
her  gray  eyes !  —  she  told  me  that  I  had  been 
born  with  "  a  sinful  propensity  to  the  iniquity 
of  superfluous  speech."  Over-meekness  I  cer- 
tainly had  not  been  born  with,  and  I  retorted 
that  I  could  bear  that  better  than  the  iniquity 
of  superfluous  great-aunts.  She  was  a  stifl'- 
necked  old  goose,  but  I  am  sometimes  afraid 
that  she  was  right  about  the  superfluous  speech. 
All  the  same,  I  must  go  on  with  my  preachment 
just  a  little  further. 

The  feeling  wc  have  about  doing  as  our  own 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    103 

kind  do  and  of  being  judged  by  them  is  per- 
fectly natural,  and,  indeed,  inevitable;  but  it 
has  its  dangers.  I  spare  you  the  obvious  talk 
about  how  easy  it  is  to  fall  into  cowardly  moral 
weakness  from  the  fear  of  being  thought  sin- 
gular. If  the  idea  is  n't  in  your  nerves  already, 
I  cannot  beat  it  into  your  bones,  and  I  know 
enough  not  to  try.-  I  only  wish  to  say  that  we 
are  pushing  acceptance  of  the  notions  of  our 
friends  too  far,  if  we  let  it  obscure  our  individ- 
uality. To  conform  to  the  customs  and  habits 
and  manners  of  the  crowd  is  a  common  im- 
pulse with  most  of  us.  The  woman  who  has 
a  natural  tendency  to  decide  for  herself  what 
she  will  accept  and  what  she  will  refuse  in  the 
matter  of  social  tradition  and  social  fashions 
is  born  —  for  good  or  for  bad  —  with  individ- 
uality. The  woman  who  is  not  born  with  this 
habit  of  mind  had  better  cultivate  it.  That 
is  the  only  way  to  protect  herself  against  the 
danger  of  being  so  like  everybody  else  as  not 
to  count  as  a  real  person  at  all.  She  is  only 
one  of  a  crowd,  and  you  can,  I  am  sure,  name 
off-hand  plenty  of  examples  among  your  own 
acquaintances.    Do  at  least  think  for  yourself 


104   A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

in  opposition  to  your  set  sufficiently  to  have 
your  personality  marked  and  distinct. 

You  will  do  well  to  remember,  too,  that  the 
girl  who  establishes  her  character  for  inde- 
pendence is  allowed  to  be  independent,  while 
she  who  is  a  slave  to  the  opinions  of  others  is 
in  the  end  not  expected  to  say  that  her  soul  is 
her  own.  The  attitude  of  independence,  more- 
over, is  admired  and  envied;  so  that  if  you 
should  carry  out  every  wise  suggestion  I  make 
to  you, —  which  Heaven  knows  you  are  not 
in  the  least  likely  to !  —  you  would  in  the  end 
find  yourself  not  condemned  by  the  opinion  of 
your  circle,  not  regarded  with  scorn  by  your 
so-much-dreaded  peers,  but  looked  up  to  by 
them  as  a  real  person,  determined  to  be  a  law 
unto  herself,  and  for  that  very  reason  to  be 
respected  and  envied. 


XII 

TO  SPEAK  WITH  TONGUES 

Your  Count  is  really  delightful,  and  I  am 
obliged  to  you  for  sending  him  to  me.  An 
accomplished  Frenchman  with  the  right  flavor 
is  a  charming  beverage,  and  Count  de  Guarie 
has  exactly  the  proper  bouquet.  —  Does  n't 
that  sound  well  ?  My  husband  furnished  that 
simile,  but  I  am  using  it  in  conversation  with 
excellent  effect !  —  I  made  a  dinner  for  the 
Count,  and  it  went  off  very  well  after  I  got  my 
guests.  I  had  a  lot  of  bother  to  find  people 
that  I  wanted  who  would  go  well  together, 
and  who  could  speak  French  good  enough  for 
me  to  be  willing  to  exhibit  it  to  an  educated 
Frenchman.  The  Count  has  so  pitifully  little 
English,  it  would  have  been  a  gross  violation 
of  hospitality  to  exact  any  of  it,  and  I  was 
anxious  that  he  should  enjoy  himself  without 
feeling  as  if  he  were  having  a  language  lesson. 
He  knows  less  English  than  most  of  the  for- 


106  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

eigners  who  come  over.  When  he  called  first, 
he  had  great  difficulty  in  making  the  maid 
understand  what  he  wanted.  She  is  rather 
stupid,  and  she  declares  that  he  asked  if 
"de  madame  shave  .^"  He  probably  said 
''chez  elle,""  and  I  think  she  suspected  him  of 
some  design  of  selling  razors.  I  determined,  as 
soon  as  I  found  he  was  so  agreeable,  that  he 
should  have  at  least  one  dinner  in  his  own 
tongue  in  America,  and  from  the  profusion 
of  his  gratitude  I  conclude  that  such  a  lux- 
ury has  not  often  come  in  his  way  since  he 
landed. 

I  am  constantly  surprised  and  irritated  that 
the  men  and  women  of  good  social  position 
in  this  country  are  so  generally  content  to 
go  through  life  ignorant  of  foreign  tongues. 
There  is  hardly  another  country  in  the  civ- 
ilized world  where  persons  who  expect  to  be 
regarded  as  well-bred  are  so  poorly  equipped 
in  this  respect.  The  English  generally  affect 
a  supreme  contempt  for  all  languages  except 
their  own;  and  are  really  worse  than  we  are. 
The  French  do  not,  of  course,  know  English, 
with  rare  exceptions,  but  if  they  are  educated 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   107 

people,  they  are  familiar  with  the  speech  of  the 
chief  Continental  nations.  We  seem  to  follow 
the  fashion  of  our  British  ancestors  in  this 
regard ;  —  and  an  enormous  pity  it  is,  too.    _ 

If  I  had  a  daughter  to  bring  up,  I  would  see 
that  she  could  read  and  write,  knew  enough 
arithmetic  to  keep  her  check-book  straight, 
and  then  I  would  have  her  put  practically  all 
the  rest  of  her  energies  on  languages.  She 
would  get  general  information  enough  by 
reading,  I  would  risk  that;  and  if  she  lacked 
the  smattering  —  a  great  deal  better  word 
would  be  "spattering"  —  of  science  and  the 
"ologies"  that  girls  are  trained  in  nowadays, 
I  should  be  rather  pleased  than  otherwise.  If 
she  could  speak  French  and  Italian  really  well, 
I  should  be  comfortable  in  my  mind  about 
her;  and  if,  in  addition,  she  knew  German,  I 
should  thank  Heaven  for  giving  me  a  daugh- 
ter admirably  educated!  ) 

Of  course  you  think  this  is  extravagant ;  but 
it  is  only  sensible.  No  girl  could  learn  to  speak 
a  couple  of  foreign  languages  well  without 
acquiring  a  great  many  ideas.  More  than  that, 
she  would  be  sure  to  have  her  mind  broadened 


108  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

and  her  views  of  life  enlarged.  With  a  know- 
ledge of  languages,  and  her  reading,  I  would 
trust  her  against  any  misguided  girl  that  ever 
made  melancholy  barrenness  of  her  mind  in  a 
woman's  college! 

It  is  very  stupid  to  travel  without  at  least 
one  or  two  foreign  languages.  Any  girl  now- 
adays is  likely  to  travel,  and  all  girls  who  have 
money  enough  to  spend  much  on  education 
are  apt  to  go  about  the  world  a  good  deal. 
One  gets  so  little  out  of  a  country  that  keeps 
her  at  arm's  length  because  she  is  ignorant  of 
the  speech  of  the  people  that  I  am  tempted  to 
say  one  might  almost  as  well  stay  at  home.  Of 
course  I  don't  mean  anything  so  extreme  as 
that,  but  it  is  wonderful  w  hat  a  difference  even 
a  limited  knowledge  of  the  language  of  a  for- 
eign country  makes  in  traveling  there. 

To  say  anything  about  the  advantages  of 
being  able  to  read  literature  in  the  original  is 
rather  stupid,  but  I  hold  so  firmly  to  reading 
as  a  means  of  intellectual  salvation  that  I  have 
to  insist  upon  the  importance  of  meeting  an 
author  on  his  own  ground.  Reading  transla- 
tions is  a  good  deal  like  hearing  the  voice  of  a 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    109 

great  singer  squeakingly  distorted  by  a  gra- 
phophone.  You  should  keep  in  mind,  god- 
daughter of  a  most  old-fashioned  marrame, 
that  reading  is  —  or  should  be,  according  to 
my  theory  —  a  woman's  university.  Your 
mental  development  will  depend  on  what  and 
how  you  read  rather  than  upon  what  you 
study.  Modern  education  seems  to  me  a  good 
deal  off  the  track  because  it  ignores  this,  and 
it  is  the  very  first  thing  to  be  considered  in 
educating  girls. 

Now  and  then  a  woman  appears  who  can 
really  study,  and  does  study ;  who  takes  to 
some  extent  the  intellectual  initiative,  and  who 
makes  real  additions  to  the  knowledge  of  the 
world.  How  rare  this  is,  anybody  may  appre- 
ciate who  takes  the  trouble  to  count  up  the 
number  of  such  women  who  have  thus  far  ap- 
peared. When  one  does  arise,  all  we  women 
are  called  upon  to  wonder  at  such  a  prodigy, 
and  to  applaud  her  as  a  glory  to  her  sex.  I 
must  confess  that,  while  I  am  ready  enough  to 
admire,  and  while  I  do  admire,  my  admiration 
goes  to  the  individual  and  not  to  the  woman. 
More  than  that,  I  find  it  impossible  not  to  feel 


110  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

that  this  sort  of  an  intellectual  triumph  is  won 
by  being  so  much  less  feminine. 

Sherman  insists  that  I  have  a  theory  that 
woman  is  possessed  of  intuition  as  a  rew^ard 
for  having  through  the  ages  ignored  the  lower 
habit  of  reasoning;  and  that  I  constantly  fear 
that  if  women  become  too  intellectual,  they  will 
sink  back  into  being  simply  rational,  instead 
of  intuitive.  Of  course  this  is  only  his  teasing, 
and  as  a  man  he  cannot  see  that  there  is  real 
truth  in  it.  A  man  reasons,  and  a  woman  just 
knows;  but  in  the  end  the  woman's  intuition 
is  generally  proved  to  be  right,  and  for  my  part 
I  am  not  able  to  see  how  it  would  be  better  to 
be  in  a  slough  of  logic,  uncertain  whether  one 
would  get  out  on  the  right  side  after  all,  than 
to  sail  serenely  through  the  air  to  the  goal  at 
once!  There  is  really  a  lot  of  truth  in  what 
Sherman  says,  I  believe,  although  of  course  as 
a  man  puts  it,  and  from  a  man's  point  of  view, 
it  sounds  ridiculous.  (This  is  what,  in  the 
novels  of  my  youth,  or  my  mother's  youth, 
which  I  read  in  mine,  was  called  a  digression. 
Now  it  is  called  "another  story.") 

Oh !  I  meant  to  say  in  that  digression  that 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    111 

I  hope  you  are  not  silly  enough  to  think  I  am 
belittling  my  sex.  We  women  are  a  hundred 
times  cleverer  than  men  in  our  way,  —  than 
most  men,  that  is;  not  than  all  men.  But 
to  study,  to  deduce,  to  philosophize,  even  to 
originate,  is  n't  our  part.  I  tell  Sherman  that 
men  are  the  miners  who  dig  ideas  as  ore  out 
of  the  ground,  do  the  heavy  work  of  getting 
them  into  usable  shape,  and  then  we  women 
give  to  the  gold  its  finish  and  polish.  At  any 
rate,  after  all  the  innumerable,  unending,  in- 
conclusive arguments  over  the  comparative 
mental  force  and  standing  of  the  masculine 
and  the  feminine  mind  are  tossed  out  on  the 
dust-heap  where  they  belong,  I  take  my  stand 
on  experience  and  observation,  and  declare 
boldly  that  the  best  results  in  culture  are 
attained  by  the  man  who  studies  and  the 
woman  who  reads,  —  and  reads,  of  course,  in 
as  many  languages  as  possible. 

The  social  side,  however,  is  the  one  on 
which  just  now  the  importance  of  knowing 
languages  is  likely  to  appeal  to  you.  You 
need,  as  every  girl  in  good  society  needs,  the 
training  of  the  best  company  of  other  conn- 


112  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

tries.  You  should  be  able  to  hold  your  own  in 
the  best  circles  of  Paris  or  Rome;  and,  what  is 
of  more  importance,  be  able  to  appreciate  the 
finesse,  the  nuances,  of  foreign  talk.  Italian 
and  French  conversation  in  the  best  circles 
may  or  may  not,  on  the  whole,  be  better  than 
the  best  talk  in  America,  but  it  is  certainly 
more  subtle,  more  finished,  more  surely  and 
completely  a  work  of  art. 

To  be  able,  moreover,  to  converse  with  for- 
eigners in  their  own  tongue  gives  an  especial 
social  power.  No  accomplishment  confers  a 
more  marked  distinction ;  and  as  modern 
travel  increases,  the  opportunities  for  using 
the  accomplishment  become  more  numerous. 
Think  how  many  foreigners  of  considerable 
distinction  come  to  America  now;  and  I  con- 
fess I  feel  that  every  woman  is  bound  to  have 
patriotism  enough  to  do  her  part  toward  send- 
ing these  visitors  home  with  respect,  or,  if 
possible,  with  admiration,  for  our  country. 

The  dangers  of  using  foreign  speech  are 
evident  enough,  and  they  have  furnished  jokes 
for  the  comic  papers  from  the  time  there  were 
any  comic  papers,  I  suppose;   and  will  to  the 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    113 

end  of  time,  or  till  all  mankind  speaks  the 
same  tongue.  While  Count  de  Guarie  was 
here,  Estelle  Trainor  undertook  to  talk  art  to 
him,  —  Heaven  only  knows  why!  She  asked 
him  if  he  admired  Botticelli,  and  went  on  to 
say  that  the  picture  she  loved  most  in  the 
world  was  Botticelli's  "Venus  mal  de  mer'\f 
Of  course  that  is  unbelievably  absurd;  but 
she  said  it.  We  could  either  of  us  tell  a  string 
of  stories  of  this  sort;  but  I  have  confidence 
enough  in  you  to  be  sure  that  you  would  at 
least  know  what  you  were  saying,  if  you  ven- 
tured to  address  a  foreigner  in  his  own  tongue. 
The  end  of  the  whole  business  is  that  I  beg 
of  you  to  cultivate  foreign  speech,  —  learn,  I 
mean,  to  speak  languages,  as  well  as  to  read 
them.  Never  mind  if  a  lot  of  other  things  have 
to  be  left  undone ;  we  can  none  of  us  do  every- 
thing in  this  world,  or  a  thousandth  part  of 
the  thousandth  part  of  what  we  would  like  to 
do.  Life  consists  chiefly  in  deciding  what  not 
to  attempt,  and  wisdom  is  only  another  name 
for  judicious  elimination.  —  There,  I  cannot 
come  nearer  to  a  modern  epigram  than  that 
if  I  write  for  a  month ! 


114    A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

Oh,  what  a  wise  choice  you  made  in  a  god- 
mother! The  selection  was  so  wonderful  in 
one  so  young  as  you  were  at  the  time  that  it 
proves  my  claim  that  women  are  born  with 
intuition!    Good-night. 


XIII 

THE  MORALS  OF  SOCIAL  DUTY 

So  you  wonder  at  my  being  surprised  that 
more  people  do  not  learn  languages,  do  you, 
when  so  many  persons  are  indifferent  to  edu- 
cation generally  ?  This  is  true  enough,  though 
you  have  no  business,  my  dear,  to  be  making 
such  uncharitable  generalizations!  I  shall 
begin  to  fear  I  am  training  you  by  my  letters 
to  be  altogether  too  sophisticated  and  worldly 
wise,  if  you  take  to  bringing  out  accusations 
against  your  whole  generation. 

To  speak  seriously,  however,  this  is  all  part, 
I  suppose,  of  the  general  fact  that  we  have 
here  in  America  some  social  instincts,  but  few 
social  traditions.  Sherman  says  the  traditions 
which  came  over  with  us  from  England  sur- 
vived the  Revolution,  but  vanished  in  the  Civil 
War.  Perhaps ;  but  I  think  the  trouble  is  that 
the  struggle  necessary  to  make  this  continent 
habitable  has  so  absorbed  the  best  energies  of 


116  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

Americans  that  we  have  in  general  come  to  be 
too  crude  to  feel  the  necessity  of  studying  and 
working  to  fill  a  place  in  society.  Once  or  twice 
in  my  life  I  have  been  so  placed  as  to  be  able 
to  see  how  children  of  royal  families  abroad 
have  to  train  for  their  position.  There  is  not 
an  American  child  alive  who  would  go  through 
such  a  probation  to  earn  the  crown  of  half 
Europe !  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  a  good 
deal  of  the  sympathy  we  have  for  child-labor 
in  factories  and  mines  might  well  be  expended 
on  the  poor  little  fagged  wretches  that  are 
being  made  into  monarchs. 

Even  of  the  children  of  the  nobility,  —  of 
the  old  nobility,  I  mean,  —  much  the  same 
thing  is  true.  The  children  of  the  Duchess  of 
Zibelstein  have  to  toil  tremendously.  Once, 
when  I  was  staying  with  her,  I  had  a  good 
deal  of  talk  about  how  children  should  be 
brought  up,  and  I  came  home  feeling  that  in 
this  country  we  had  not  begun  to  understand 
what  it  means  for  children  to  work  at  their 
studies.  The  Duchess  insisted  that  modern 
fashions  of  education  sacrifice  the  whole 
future  of  a  child  to  its  pleasure  in  the  first 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    117 

dozen  years  of  its  life;  and  I  can  see  why  she 
should  think  so.  I  am  sure  her  conscience 
must  be  clear  on  that  score,  for  she  did  keep 
the  little  "ducklings,"  as  Sherman  says  the 
offspring  of  a  duke  should  be  called,  tre- 
mendously hard  at  work.  They  are  reaping 
the  reward  now  by  having  the  social  world  at 
their  feet.  In  this  country  we  certainly  do  not 
understand  that  sort  of  thing  at  all. 

Some  time  when  society  in  America  be- 
comes more  organic,  I  suppose  those  who 
have  any  real  claim  to  lead  will  be  forced  to 
make  their  claim  good  in  some  way  besides 
proving  the  length  of  their  bank  accounts. 
Good  society  can  no  more  exist  without 
wealth  than  a  man  without  air;  but  no  more 
can  it  exist  on  money  solely  than  a  man  can 
flourish  who  has  no  food  but  his  breath.  We 
shall  arrive  at  last,  I  am  confident,  at  a  civil- 
ized recognition  of  the  fact  that  it  is  the  duty 
of  a  certain  class  to  nourish  social  tradition, 
just  as  it  is  the  function  of  another  class  to  dig 
ditches.  I  am  democratic  enough  in  one  way, 
but  I  cannot  be  such  a  fool  as  not  to  recognize 
that  division  into  classes  is  natural  and  inev- 


118  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

itable.    Fortunately,  it  is,  it  seems  to  me,  also 
wholesome  and  beneficent. 

Nowadays,  however,  those  who  ought  to  do 
their  part  in  the  body  politic  by  keeping  up 
society  seem  to  suppose  they  have  no  duty 
except  to  amuse  themselves  in  the  most  flashy 
and  vulgar  fashion.  They  are  too  indolent,  too 
selfish,  or  too  shallow  even  to  fit  themselves  for 
any  enjoyments  except  those  which  really  and 
properly  belong  to  the  bourgeoisie.  They  can- 
not for  a  moment  get  it  into  their  heads  that 
they  owe  anything  to  society.  Given  the  differ- 
ence of  the  times,  the  "  smart "  set  of  to-day  — 
is  n't  it  a  vulgar  word,  and  does  n't  it  exactly 
express  a  certain  class  ?  —  is  more  objection- 
able than  the  French  nobility  of  the  days 
which  preceded  and  brought  about  the  Revo- 
lution. The  French  nobles  of  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries  were  corrupt  enough 
and  cruel  enough,  and  they  treated  the  lower 
classes  as  if  there  could  be  no  Day  of  Judg- 
ment; but  of  the  "smart"  set  to-day  all  this 
is  equally  true,  except  for  the  limitations  im- 
posed by  different  social  and  political  condi- 
tions ;   they  are  as  cruel,  as  overbearing,  as 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    119 

they  dare,  and  as  corrupt,  in  too  many  cases, 
as  they  have  imagination  enough  to  be.  The 
old  nobiUty  had  at  least  a  certain  sort  of  self- 
respect,  a  sense  of  responsibility  to  their  order, 
some  kind  of  realization  of  the  spirit  they 
embodied  in  that  most  magnificent  phrase. 
Noblesse  oblige. 

It  is  a  great  pity  that  social  distinctions  are 
not  more  clearly  recognized  in  America,  or  at 
least  that  they  are  not  recognized  more  ration- 
ally. They  of  course  exist  in  some  sort,  as  they 
must  and  will  exist  everywhere,  and  the  result 
of  having  no  legitimate  class  gradations  is 
here,  as  it  is  sure  to  be  anywhere,  that  mere 
money  pushes  itself  to  the  front.  It  is  melan- 
choly to  think  how  far  this  has  gone  in  Amer- 
ican society.  In  the  old  times  when  the  social 
traditions  that  had  come  over  from  England 
were  still  in  force,  things  were  in  a  much  bet- 
ter condition  than  they  are  now;  but  these 
have  been  outgrown,  and  nothing  but  money 
has  taken  their  place.  Anything  seems  to  do 
for  gilding,  and  an  aristocracy  of  money  is 
about  the  most  vulgar  thing  on  earth.  The 
general  tone  of  society  cannot  be  kept  up  with- 


120  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

out  a  standard,  and  I  believe  in  having  a  class 
refined,  exclusive,  rigorously  select,  as  an  ele- 
ment necessary  to  the  good  of  the  whole. 

In  a  republic  we  resent  the  principle  of 
exclusion;  but  nothing  that  is  at  all  desirable 
can  be  kept  admirable  without  the  exclu- 
sion of  the  unworthy.  If  I  admit  that  socially 
every  person  is  as  good  as  every  other,  I  have 
done  away  with  the  only  theory  on  which  any 
society  worth  the  name  can  rest.  We  need 
a  class  which  recognizes  that  certain  quali- 
fications are  essential  to  the  best  and  most 
refined  social  intercourse,  and  which  rigorously 
excludes  any  person  who  lacks  these.  We 
have  the  chance  here  in  America  to  establish 
requirements  higher  and  better  than  have 
ever  been  known  in  the  world ;  but  instead  of 
doing  anything  of  the  kind,  we  seem  to  be 
getting  farther  and  farther  from  it  every  day. 

Unless  such  a  class  is  thoroughly  well  estab- 
lished, its  members  will  never  feel  any  real 
responsibility  about  keeping  up  its  traditions. 
Indeed,  until  it  is  well  established  it  can  have 
no  traditions.  People  must  be  impressed  with 
the  necessity  of  living  up  to  a  high  standard  of 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    121 

cultivation.  They  must  feel  the  demands  of 
their  order  as  an  incentive  to  work;  and  if  this 
work  by  the  nature  of  things  be  chiefly  in  the 
lines  of  the  artistic  rather  than  of  the  material, 
if  instead  of  with  morals  they  seem  to  be  con- 
cerned largely  with  manners,  they  are  still 
playing  a  part  in  the  advancement  of  civiliza- 
tion that  is  by  no  means  unimportant.  In 
these  days,  indeed,  when  the  three  graces  have 
in  popular  favor  been  replaced  by  the  butcher, 
the  baker,  and  the  candlestick-maker,  and 
when  if  Apollo  revisited  earth  the  chief  inter- 
est would  be  in  his  bank  account,  to  keep  alive 
in  the  community  some  notion  of  the  refine- 
ments of  life,  to  cherish  the  artistic  and  even 
the  becoming,  would  seem  to  me  one  of  the 
most  timely  and  valuable  of  offices. 

As  far  as  morals  goes,  too,  I  believe  the 
influence  of  an  established  and  recognized 
class  of  social  leaders  would  be  better  than  the 
present  condition  of  things.  An  established 
order  has  as  a  necessity  some  sort  of  a  code, 
and  any  code  is  better  than  none.  The  fast, 
over-rich  set  have  no  sort  of  standard,  and  the 
result  is  most  lamentable. 


122  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

I  am  getting  run  away  with  by  a  hobby, 
perhaps;  and  I  do  not  expect  that  even  if 
we  agree,  you  and  I  can  estabHsh  a  social 
standard.  I  do  beheve,  though,  that  we  can 
preserve  our  self-respect  by  refusing  to  put 
ourselves  on  a  level  with  the  vulgar  money- 
bags, the  immoral  devotees  of  the  divorce- 
habit,  and  the  people  of  that  sort  that  are 
ruining  American  society. 

All  this  may  not  seem  to  you  to  have  much 
to  do  with  the  study  of  languages,  but  it  really 
is  part  of  the  whole  subject  of  how  unfair  it 
is  for  so  many  persons  to  thrust  themselves 
into  society  without  being  willing  to  take 
the  trouble  to  fit  themselves  to  do  their  part. 
Sherman  sums  the  whole  matter  up  by  saying 
they  do  not  know  the  rules  of  the  game ;  but 
I  tell  him  the  diflSculty  is  that  nobody  is  pre- 
pared to  make  it  clear  what  the  rules  of  the 
social  game  are,  or  even  to  insist  that  there 
are  any. 

And  now,  miss,  if  you  (k)  not  set  yourself 
to  learn  instantly  and  thoroughly  all  the 
languages  of  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa,  you 
will    prove  yourself  to   be   either  hopelessly 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    123 

hard  of  heart,  or  stubbornly  dull  of  compre- 
hension ! 

I  have  read  this  over,  and  I  see  I  have 
quoted  Sherman  until  you  will  think  me  a  fool ; 
but  yesterday  was  the  anniversary  of  our 
wedding-day,  and  he  gave  me  the  loveliest 
sapphire ! 


XIV 

THE  COURTESY  OF  BOOKS 

What  shall  you  read  ?  Do  you  expect  me  to 
send  you  one  of  those  idiotic  things  called  "A 
List  of  the  One  Hundred  Best  Books,"  or 
"The  World's  Masterpieces  of  Literature"? 
You  say  it  is  all  very  well  for  me  to  declare 
that  your  cultivation  depends  on  your  read- 
ing, and  then  to  leave  you  without  telling  you 
anything  more.  Very  well,  my  dear;  I  will  go 
a  step  farther,  and  tell  you  that  your  cultiva- 
tion depends  on  what  you  have  the  sense  to 
choose  to  read. 

What  shall  you  read,  you  precious  goose  ? 
Read  what  you  like.  You  want  somebody 
else  to  take  a  responsibility  that  you  can't  for 
the  life  of  you  put  off  of  your  own  shoulders. 
You  have  to  select,  and  to  do  it  out  of  the  con- 
stantly multiplying,  already  infinite  number 
of  books  that  adorn  or  encumber  the  world.  I 
cannot  tell  you  what  to  read.  Only  if  you  find 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    125 

you  like  trash  in  the  way  of  reading,  you  may 
as  well  recognize  the  fact  that  you  are  by 
nature  or  self-indulgence  worthy  to  be  nothing 
better  than  a  hewer  of  wood  or  a  drawer  of 
water,  —  and  are  not  even  likely  to  bring 
much  credit  to  those  eminently  useful  and 
respectable  if  not  socially  exalted  classes. 

I  can  and  will  give  you  a  few  of  the  conclu- 
sions to  which  experience  has  brought  me  in 
regard  to  this  business;  and  you  may  accept 
them  or  not,  as  you  choose. 

If  you  read  at  all,  you  must  read  for  the  fun 
of  it,  or  you  will  get  no  real  good.  1  have  in 
my  time  conscientiously  dragged  my  slow  and 
painful  way  through  a  lot  of  most  admirable 
and  improving  works  without  getting  the 
smallest  particle  of  benefit.  I  was  not  inter- 
ested, and  so  nothing  stuck.  I  don't  know 
how  it  is  with  a  man,  —  Sherman  seems  to  be 
able  to  make  himself  interested  in  books  just 
by  determining  to  be;  but  that  seems  so  un- 
natural I  cannot  believe  it  to  be  true  of  the 
majority  even  of  men,  unless,  indeed,  it  is  part 
of  the  difference  which  makes  them  study  in 
a  way  we  never  can ;  —  I  am  sure  a  woman 


12G  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

must  be  interested  in  a  book,  or  it  all  slips 
through  her  mind  as  water  runs  through  a 
sieve. 

You  are  to  read  what  you  enjoy;  but  you 
must  have  some  sort  of  a  conscience,  and  if 
you  have,  you  will  feel  it  coming  into  this 
affair  as  into  anything  else.  The  New  England 
conscience  is  becoming  somewhat  modified  in 
the  course  of  our  rapid  moral  evolution;  but 
it  is  still  a  pretty  effective  agent.  You  will  find, 
I  am  sure,  that  you  cannot  have  much  fun 
reading  unworthy  things,  because  your  irri- 
table little  conscience  w  ill  keep  twinging  like  a 
neuralgic  spot  when  you  have  been  sitting  in  a 
draught.  —  That  is  a  very  good  simile,  but  it 
occurs  to  me  to  hope  you  are  too  young  to 
appreciate  it!  —  The  line  that  your  particular 
scruples  draw  between  books  good  and  books 
bad,  I  cannot  pretend  to  say;  but  from  what 
I  know  of  you,  I  suppose  it  to  be  respectably 
high  in  the  scale. 

In  reading,  moreover,  you  will  find  it  not 
amiss  to  use  at  least  as  much  common  sense  as 
you  would  employ  in  ordering  a  dinner.  You 
have  been  told  a  thousand  times  not  to  make 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    127 

your  mental  diet  all  sweets  or  all  solids ;  and  I 
see  no  reason  why  I  should  dilate  on  this  and 
other  equally  obvious  things.  They  are  the 
stock  in  trade  of  the  professional  moralist,  and 
they  figure  in  every  lecture  on  literature.  They 
never  fail,  these  improving  maxims,  because, 
as  no  reader  ever  pays  much  if  any  attention 
to  them,  they  are  always  in  order. 

If  I  were  one  of  those  didactic  writers,  I 
would  call  your  attention  to  the  fact  that  you 
get  a  great  deal  more  pleasure  out  of  your 
reading  if  you  vary  it.  To  keep  on  eating  one 
kind  of  food  uninterruptedly  is  soon  most 
stupid  and  cloying,  and  kills  the  appetite  alto- 
gether. You  know  enough  to  select  books 
worth  reading  ;  just  mix  the  light  with  the 
grave,  and  go  ahead.  Don't  bother  about  a 
"course."  You  are  not  studying  to  fit  yourself 
for  professional  work  or  an  examination,  — 
that  process  of  cramming  your  head  with 
facts  that  do  not  interest  you  for  the  sake  of 
pouring  them  out  in  turn  to  somebody  not  in 
the  least  interested  in  them  either.  You  are 
just  a  young  woman  reading  primarily  for  the 
purpose  of  gaining  a  broad  culture,  and  doing 


128  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

it  along  the  lines  of  your  personal  preference 
and  pleasure.  It  is  well  enough  now  and  then 
to  begin  a  course,  if  your  conscience  has  a  mor- 
bid turn  that  way.  Get  one  of  those  lists  of 
improving  books  which  are  begun  with  moral 
enthusiasm,  and  finished,  if  at  all,  with  mortal 
ennui.  You  will  not,  I  am  inclined  to  think, 
be  obstinate  enough  ever  to  force  your  way  to 
the  end  of  such  a  list.  The  process  always 
seemed  to  me  a  good  deal  like  resolutely  eating 
one's  way  stolidly  through  every  item  on  a 
menu,  regardless  of  appetite  or  digestion. 

I  hope  you  are  incapable  of  reading  simply 
for  the  sake  of  being  able  to  give  an  opinion  of 
a  book.  Now  and  then  you  may  have  occasion 
to  go  through  something  just  to  see  what  it  is 
worth;  but  that  is  not  real  reading.  You  get 
most  from  a  book  when  you  let  yourself  go, 
and  revel  in  it  for  pure  joy.  Mrs.  Browning 
has  borrowed  this  idea  from  me,  and  says 
something  of  the  sort,  —  that  we  get  anything 
worth  while  only  when  we  plunge  headfore- 
most "into  a  book's  profound,"  with  no  reck- 
oning how  much  we  are  to  get  from  it.  Keep- 
ing  an   accurate   account   with   literature   is 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    129 

hardly  more  sensible  than  trying  to  draw  up  a 
balance-sheet  with  love. 

You  will  have  opinions,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
and  will  judge  books  by  them;  but  if  your 
reading  is  done  in  the  best  way,  your  judg- 
ment should  generally  be  wrong  when  you 
finish  reading  anything  that  is  worth  while, 
anything  with  genuine  life-blood  in  it.  When 
you  have  had  time  to  digest  it,  to  let  your 
mind  almost  unconsciously  consider  and 
weigh,  you  may  and  should  have  an  intelligent 
estimate  of  its  defects  and  its  merits;  but 
when  you  have  just  put  the  book  down,  you 
should  still  be  too  much  under  the  spell  of  the 
enthusiasm  in  which  you  read  to  be  able  to 
criticise  acutely  or  judiciously. 

I  have  no  patience  with  those  people  who 
think  it  necessary  to  have  a  cut-and-dried 
opinion  of  everything  they  read,  as  if  they  were 
responsible  for  the  intellectual  condition  of  the 
world.  After  all,  a  sense  of  moral  responsi- 
bility is  very  easily  developed  into  mere  mor- 
bid vanity ;  and  some  of  our  Puritan  ancestors 
seem  to  me  to  have  gone  a  good  way  in  this 
direction.     They  so  exaggerated  the  impor- 


130  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

tance  of  distinguishing  between  right  and 
wrong,  down  to  the  finest  possible  shades, 
that  they  came  to  feel  almost  as  if  the  differ- 
ence were  not  one  of  fact,  but  depended  upon 
their  individual  opinion.  I  am  happy  to  say 
that  I  do  not  feel  that  my  making  a  mistake 
upsets  the  moral  balance  of  the  universe. 

Of  course  we  should  try  and  do  try  to  look 
at  things  fairly,  but  we  are  all  likely  to  over- 
estimate the  importance  of  our  decisions.  We 
make  a  great  moral  question  of  our  opinion 
of  books,  and  feel  almost  as  if  an  erroneous 
decision  might  unconsciously  commit  us  to 
the  mysterious  unpardonable  sin,  that  bug- 
bear which  tormented  the  souls  of  our  dear 
dead  and  gone  forefathers,  —  and  yet,  after 
all,  it  really  matters  so  very  little! 

Great-aunt  Tabby,  terror  of  my  childhood, 
once  looked  over  her  glasses  at  me  with  her 
cold  eyes  and  demanded:  "When  you  retire 
for  the  night,  do  you  consider  the  moral  bear- 
ing of  each  act  you  have  done  during  the 
day?" 

"Goodness!"  I  said.  "Of  course  I  don't! 
Do  you.?" 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    131 

"Always,"  she  replied,  with  preternatural 
gravity,  and  a  folding  of  her  thin  lips  that  used 
to  drive  me  wild.  "And  whatever  I  do  dur- 
ing the  day,  I  do  with  an  eye  to  that  solemn 
retrospect." 

"Well,  aunt  Tabby,"  I  said,  as  sweetly  as 
possible,  "I  am  lucky  enough  not  to  be  so 
given  to  wickedness  as  to  have  to  watch  my- 
self like  that.  When  I  go  to  bed,  I  go  to  sleep." 

She  stiffened  up  her  lean  neck,  —  such  is  my 
hardness  of  heart  that  even  now,  when  she  has 
been  in  her  grave  thirty  years,  I  cannot  even 
write  kindly  of  poor  old  great-aunt  Tabby !  — 
and  set  her  mouth  more  severely  than  ever. 

"  I  should  be  sorry  to  die  in  my  sleep  with- 
out having  had  a  realizing  sense  of  what  my 
day  had  been,"  she  retorted,  with  the  crushing 
solemnity  of  seventeen  Cotton  Mathers  boiled 
down  into  one. 

I  was  too  young  and  too  flippant  to  neglect 
the  chance  for  the  last  word,  so  I  said,  fool- 
ishly enough,  that  I  had  never  died  in  my 
sleep,  so  I  could  n't  tell  how  it  would  seem; 
and  then  I  whisked  away  before  her  horror  at 
my  levity  had  allowed  her  to  catch  her  breath. 


132  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

Some  superior  women  read  in  the  way  aunt 
Tabby  lived,  —  always  with  an  eye  to  after- 
consideration  of  the  book.  They  cannot  bear 
the  idea  that  they  might  die  in  their  sleep 
without  a  "realizing  sense"  of  what  they 
ought  to  think  of  every  page  they  go  over.  I 
do  not  care,  and  I  do  not  bother. 

An  opinion  is  of  some  value  when  you  have 
to  talk  about  books,  although  if  you  have  any 
cleverness,  it  is  not  at  all  necessary;  but  if  you 
have  read  them  freely  and  whole-heartedly, 
you  will  find  an  opinion  ready  when  you  need 
one.  It  will  be  a  great  deal  fresher,  too,  for 
being  put  into  words  for  the  first  time  on  the 
spot  and  at  the  minute.  The  most  intelligent 
opinion  is  by  no  means  necessarily  the  one 
most  carefully  prepared  beforehand;  and  the 
most  spontaneous  and  most  telling  one  is 
never  the  one  you  cut  out  and  basted  yester- 
day, —  at  least,  I  do  not  see  how  it  can  be. 

Here  is  a  hint  you  are  too  young  to  be  likely 
to  care  for  now,  but  if  the  fashion  of  discussing 
literature  has  not  disappeared  utterly  from 
the  face  of  the  earth  Jby  the  time  you  come  to 
my  years,  you  may  find  the  point  of  value.   If 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    133 

you  wish  to  talk  about  books  and  be  novel  and 
seem  knowing,  have  the  best  English  books 
sent  over  to  you  as  soon  as  they  are  out.  A 
little  trouble  does  it  all.  I  have  a  very  clever 
and  well-educated  English  friend,  a  semi-in- 
valid, who  for  her  own  pleasure  keeps  track 
of  all  the  new  publications.  Whenever  a  book 
appears  that  seems  to  her  worth  while,  she 
sends  the  name  to  a  London  bookseller  with 
whom  I  have  an  account,  and  he  forwards 
the  volume  to  me.  I  read  it  for  the  enjoyment 
I  get  out  of  it;  and  then  I  talk  of  it  judi- 
ciously for  the  sake  of  doing  my  duty  to 
society;  always,  my  dearest  goddaughter,  al- 
ways, from  a  sense  of  my  duty  in  uphold- 
ing the  intellectual  tone  of  society!  If  I  do 
get  credit  for  being  particularly  acute  and 
wonderfully  well  informed,  can  I  help  that.^ 
There  is  some  danger  that  I  grow  vain,  but 
I  preserve  my  modesty  by  reflecting  what  an 
admirable  ideal  I  am  furnishing  for  all  the 
young  people  about  me! 


XV 

THE  FINE  AllT  OF  DINING 

You  say  you  wish  you  were  a  good  diner-out; 
well,  my  child,  to  urge  upon  you  once  more 
what  my  old  lady  said  about  being  popular, 
why  not  take  the  trouble  to  make  yourself 
one  ?  You  can  hardly  at  your  age  expect  to  be 
past  mistress  of  all  social  arts,  but  you  might 
well  be  on  the  road  toward  perfection. 

It  is  really  amazing  how  little  appreciation 
there  is  of  the  fact  that  to  be  a  good  diner-out 
requires  thought  and  care.  It  is  generally 
assumed  that  if  a  woman  can  dress  herself 
properly,  and  knows  enough  to  talk  in  turn 
with  the  man  on  either  side  of  her,  there  is 
nothing  more  in  the  matter.  Dining  out,  how- 
ever, is  an  art,  and  like  any  other  art,  it  must 
be  studied. 

Some  things  are  so  patent  that  the  most 
stupid  should  know  them,  and  yet  it  is  con- 
stantly  evident   how   few    persons   take   the 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    135 

trouble  to  think  about  them.  The  diner-out 
should  know  relationships,  pedigrees,  and 
family  traditions,  so  that,  at  least  in  the  society 
where  she  generally  goes,  she  is  aware  who  is 
who,  and  understands  how  far  and  in  what 
tone  it  is  proper  to  discuss  the  absent.  It  has 
been  said  that  one  of  the  distinctive  features 
of  good  society  is  that  most  of  the  talk  is  about 
persons;  and  it  follows  that  nobody  can  get 
on  who  is  not  fairly  well  informed  about  the 
members  of  her  set.  This  is  especially  true 
of  dining.  Personal  anecdotes  are  constantly 
told  and  expected  at  dinners,  and  nothing  so 
surely  casts  a  gloom  over  a  party  as  the  intro- 
duction of  a  story  at  the  expense  of  somebody 
about  whom  one  of  the  guests  will  be  sensi- 
tive. My  dear,  the  agonies  I  have  suffered  at 
dinner-tables  where  stupid  persons  did  n't 
realize  whom  they  were  telling  their  stories 
before  could  be  expressed  only  in  terms  of  fire 
and  brimstone! 

What  do  you  think  of  a  man  who  insists  on 
talking  about  kleptomaniacs  with  a  woman 
whose  sister  is  always  getting  the  family  into 
trouble  by  purloining  things  from  shops;   or 


136  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

telling  a  delicioiisly  funny  tale  of  the  million- 
aire who  married  his  cook,  to  a  woman  whose 
father  had  just  done  the  same  abominable 
thing?  One  really  does  not  achieve  social 
success  by  relating  all  the  particulars  of  the 
elopement  of  a  lady  w  itli  her  coachman,  when 
the  sister  of  his  right-hand  neighbor  has  been 
guilty  of  an  escapade  of  the  same  sort.  All 
these  things  I  have  heard,  and  I  have  always 
been  struck  with  the  fatuous  insensibility  of 
the  fool  who  is  making  such  a  faux  pas  to  the 
efforts  of  the  entire  company  to  stop  him. 
Nothing  short  of  absolutely  cramming  a  nap- 
kin into  the  mouth  of  a  man  once  started  on 
an  ill-timed  story  of  this  kind  will  divert  him 
from  it. 

Of  course  mistakes  of  this  sort  are  to  be 
avoided  only  by  care,  or  by  a  pretty  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  company  in  which  one  is. 
Life  is  too  short  to  allow  of  one's  learning  all 
about  everybody  in  society,  and  even  then,  if 
one  is  away  from  home,  it  is  impossible  to 
know  the  company;  but  it  is  not  difficult  to 
keep  clear  of  dangerous  su])jects.  There  are 
plenty  of  things  to  talk  about  to  the  son  of  a 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    137 

forger  besides  the  condition  and  occupation  of 
cultivated  men  who  find  themselves  in  prison. 
I  heard  this  done  by  a  stupid  woman  one 
night  until  I  had  to  speak  to  her  across  the 
table,  and  ask  her  a  personal  question  so  im- 
pertinent that  she  was  forced  to  attend.  She 
had  resisted  everything  else,  and  of  course  I 
apologized  afterward,  but  I  could  with  better 
grace  have  shaken  her. 

The  woman  who  wishes  to  be  at  home  at 
the  dinner-table  must  of  course  be  familiar 
with  the  floating  gossip  of  the  day,  and  she 
should  have  at  least  enough  knowledge  of  the 
talked-of  book,  the  popular  play,  and  the 
latest  operatic  success  to  be  able  to  listen  well, 
with  assent  or  comment  at  the  right  point. 
Her  knowledge  may  be  superficial,  but  it  must 
be  ready;  and  she  must  be  able  to  comprehend 
and  seize  any  hint  that  shows  when  a  fresh 
topic  is  coming  into  the  conversation.  The 
really  clever  dining-out  woman  goes  further, 
and  masters  the  difficult  art  of  knowing  from 
the  way  in  which  the  first  mention  of  a  topic 
is  received  how  the  different  persons  involved 
in  the  conversation  are  affected  toward  it.     I 


138  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

know  women  who  are  so  acute  in  this  that 
they  can  almost  divine  what  will  be  most 
agreeable  to  any  hearer,  and  who  can  shape 
their  talk  accordingly. 

No  woman  can  shine  at  a  dinner  or  in  any 
sort  of  talk  in  America  to-day  who  cannot  tell 
a  story  effectively.  I  wish  I  had  you  in  hand. 
I  'd  make  you  tell  stories  an  hour  a  day,  and  go 
over  each  one  again  and  again  till  you  could 
tell  it  well.  Abby  Tilitson,  of  whom  I  wrote 
you,  would  take  any  story  she  heard  and  tell  it 
to  a  cross  old  aunt  she  had,  and  be  satisfied 
with  herself  only  on  the  rare  occasions  when 
she  succeeded  in  making  the  old  cross-patch 
smile.  I  know  one  man  in  Boston  —  he  is  the 
only  man  I  ever  knew  on  this  side  of  the  water 
who  took  real  pains  to  be  a  social  success  — 
who  told  stories  into  a  phonograph  until  he 
was  satisfied  with  the  way  the  phonograph 
gave  them  back  to  him.  I  confess  that  seems 
to  me  going  a  good  deal  farther  than  may  be 
called  absolutely  necessary,  and  I  have  jeered 
at  him,  but  after  all,  what  is  worth  tloing  is 
said  to  be  worth  doing  well! 

One  thing  that  counts  for  a  good  deal  in 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    139 

social  popularity  is  the  art  of  knowing  what 
to  praise  at  a  dinner.  Some  things  are  so 
obvious  that  everybody  is  sure  to  notice  them ; 
but  almost  always  there  is  something  that 
the  hostess  will  be  especially  pleased  to  have 
noticed.  Sometimes  it  is  a  new  dish,  some- 
times it  is  the  new  set  of  glass  just  imported, 
sometimes  it  is  an  experiment  about  which 
she  is  a  little  doubtful.  Make  it  a  point  to  con- 
sider what  it  is  wisest  to  praise,  and  when  and 
how  it  is  well  to  speak. 

You  see  that  it  is  no  small  thing  to  be  an 
ideal  diner-out,  but  it  is  really  worth  while,  if 
one  does  it  well.  The  art  calls  for  tact,  polish, 
social  skill;  but  as  you  go  on  in  life,  you  will 
find  that  it  is  the  social  game  best  worth 
playing. 

In  all  social  success  the  great  thing  is  to  con- 
sider what  is  agreeable  to  others,  and  so  far 
as  is  possible,  to  give  it  to  them.  Perfect  self- 
ishness and  complete  altruism,  my  child,  are 
amazingly  near  together  in  the  circle  of  human 
conduct.  —  There!  If  you  can  do  anything 
better  than  that  in  the  way  of  an  epigram,  air 
it  at  your  next  dinner! 


140   A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

P.  S.  If  it  were  not  that  it  would  sound 
vain,  I  would  add  that  I  can  hold  my  own  at  a 
dinner  reasonably  well. 

P.  P.  S.    But  it  has  cost  me  a  lot  of  work. 


XVI 

THE  FOLLY  OF  THE  MOMENT 

So  you  wish  to  know  if  I  think  you  should 
play  bridge.  By  all  means,  my  dear;  and,  my 
dear,  by  no  means.  Before  you  asked  me,  I 
had  thought  once  or  twice  about  giving  you 
the  benefit  of  my  opinions  on  that  subject,  but 
I  was  afraid  that  I  should  preach  too  much. 
I  have  so  little  patience  with  the  people  who 
are  making  a  perfect  pest  of  one  of  the  most 
delightful  things  civilization  has  invented,  the 
blessed  art  of  card-playing,  that  I  hardly 
know  where  to  begin,  and  am  still  less  likely 
to  know  where  to  stop.  A  good  series  of 
Lenten  lectures  might  be  written  on  the  sub- 
ject. I  am  sure  it  would  be  a  great  deal  more 
to  the  purpose  than  the  course  we  had  last 
year  on  "Parallelism  in  the  Prophets."  Of 
course  I  heard  those,  but  I  never  knew  wherein 
the  prophets  were  parallel,  unless  it  was  in 
their   legs ;    but    anybody  could   understand 


142  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

a  lecture  on  the  demoralization  of  playing 
bridge  day  after  day,  morning,  noon,  and 
night. 

In  a  social  world  one  must  do  as  her  neigh- 
bors do ;  but  there  are  limits  to  this.  I  am  not 
bound  to  be  divorced  just  because  I  some- 
times spend  a  summer  at  Newport.  I've  held 
my  own  there  pretty  well  without  ever  seeing 
the  inside  of  a  divorce-court,  though  at  times 
I  have  wondered  if  I  was  not  in  danger  of 
being  pointed  out  on  the  street  for  my  singu- 
larity in  that  respect.  You  should  know  how 
to  play  bridge  because  your  world  plays  it; 
but  you  need  not  on  that  account  become  a 
professional  gambler,  as  are  a  lot  of  women 
I  could  name. 

The  way  I  look  at  it  is  this.  You  should 
learn  to  play  well  enough  to  take  a  hand  when 
it  is  necessary,  and  to  be  able  to  get  along 
without  making  your  partner  uncomfortable. 
Of  course  you  play  whist,  so  this  would  n't  be 
difficult.  You  should  play  when  you  cannot 
well  avoid  it;  but  if  you  are  wise,  you  will  not 
go  much  further.  There  is  much  in  having 
your  position  defined.  If  you  take  a  stand  and 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    143 

stick  to  it,  people  will  accept  it  in  a  very  little 
while.  I  don't  myself  think  that  it  is  good 
form  to  play  tennis  on  Sunday,  but  I  was 
entirely  in  sympathy  with  George  Kirkwood 
when  he  inherited  the  old  place  at  Marmoset. 
He  turned  his  whole  family  out  to  play  tennis 
on  Sunday  morning  the  first  week  he  was  there, 
not  because  he  meant  to  play  on  that  day,  but 
because  he  did  mean  to  have  it  understood 
that  he  felt  that  he  had  a  perfect  right  to  do 
it.  The  country  folk  were  tremendously  scan- 
dalized for  a  fortnight,  and  after  that  they 
accepted  anything  the  Kirkwoods  did  as  a 
matter  of  course.  They  had  had  their  lesson, 
and  understood  that  he  had  his  own  standards 
and  would  n't  conform  to  theirs.  Just  define 
your  position  in  society,  and  you  may  do 
pretty  well  what  you  choose.  Let  it  be  known 
that  you  can  play,  but  that  you  do  not  choose 
to  be  considered  a  devotee  of  the  game.  Then 
you  will  be  allowed  to  go  your  own  way.  You 
will  not  be  regarded  as  an  obstruction,  and 
you  will  escape  slavery. 

You  are  doubtless  reflecting  that  you  won't 
be  invited  to  bridge-parties.     For  that  you 


144  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

should  give  thanks.  To  get  into  the  bridge-set 
is  to  put  yourself  into  a  social  treadmill.  You 
will  have  time  to  do  something  else,  and  if  you 
cannot  get  along  without  that  especial  form 
of  feverish  dissipation,  I'm  done  with  you. 
Every  girl  ought  to  learn  cards  as  part  of  a 
rational  education,  and  as  a  resource  for  her 
age;  but  to  make  cards  the  chief  business  of 
life  is  at  one  fell  swoop  to  sweep  away  all 
chance  of  rational  development. 

It  is  to  me  humiliating,  and  I  am  ashamed 
for  my  sex,  my  dear,  that  so  many  women  who 
have  been  intelligent  and  who  have  been  inter- 
esting should  have  been  brought  to  be  idiotic 
bores  by  this  pestilent  vice.  They  talk  of  no- 
thing else,  apparently  they  think  of  nothing 
else,  except  bridge  —  bridge  —  bridge.  They 
tell  you  —  if  you  will  listen,  which  I  for  one 
will  not !  —  of  the  hand  they  held  two  wrecks 
ago  last  Thursday,  and  the  luck  they  had  last 
Friday,  and  how  strange  it  is  that  they  should 
have  had  such  good  hands  in  the  morning 
yesterday  when  in  the  afternoon  and  the  even- 
ing they  could  n't  do  anything;  and  so  on  and 
so  on,  till  the  chattering  of  monkeys  would  be 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    145 

quite  as  intelligent,  and  far  more  agreeable! 
Mental  vacuity  could  go  very  little  farther 
without  bringing  the  whole  crew  to  a  mad- 
house, and  I  dare  say  I  shall  live  to  see  asy- 
lums founded  for  unfortunate  women  who 
have  frittered  away  their  wits  over  the  bridge- 
table. 

There  is  another  thing.  Almost  everybody, 
of  course,  plays  bridge  for  money,  and  people 
who  think  poker  too  vulgar  and  wicked  for 
words  gamble  at  bridge  with  no  compunction 
whatever.  I  obstinately  refuse.  No  living 
mortal  can  make  me  feel  that  gambling  is 
well-bred,  and  if  one  returned  from  the  dead 
to  tell  me  the  contrary,  I  should  still  hold  that 
it  is  beneath  the  dignity  of  anybody  who  calls 
herself  a  lady.  It  is  bad  enough  for  the  men. 
How  do  you  think  any  right-minded  mother 
must  feel  about  her  son's  contracting  the 
gambling  habit .^  It's  a  hundred  times  worse 
for  women.  In  the  first  place,  men  seem  to  be 
able  to  gamble  and  be  honest  about  it,  —  at 
least,  they  say  they  do.  My  husband  says  that 
to  be  caught  cheating  at  cards  would  turn  any 
man  out  of  a  gentlemen's  club.    My  dear,  1 


146  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

am  ashamed,  to  hear  cards  mentioned,  when  I 
think  of  the  women  who  are  accused  of  cheat- 
ing at  bridge! 

It's  like  smugghng.  I  can't  for  the  life  of 
me  see  why  it  is  any  harm  to  smuggle,  except 
that  it  would  be  so  horrid  to  be  caught;  and 
Sherman  says  that's  the  way  women  feel  about 
cards.    Last  w^eek  I  drove  to  a  bridge-party 

with  Mrs. ,  no  matter  who.    I  had  been 

dragged  in  at  the  last  moment  to  fill  a  place 
because  somebody  was  ill,  and  of  course  all 
the  regular  players  had  their  engagements 
made.  They  would  hate  to  play  with  me  be- 
cause I  won't  gamble;  but  as  I  am  very  apt  to 
win,  —  such  is  luck!  —  that  takes  away  the 

sting.    Mrs. talked  to  me  all  the  way  most 

feelingly  on  the  needs  of  the  church  and  the 
necessity  of  a  good  spiritual  example,  —  I  am 
really  not  exaggerating!  —  so  that  I  was 
moved  almost  to  tears ;  and  then  —  twice  in 
the  afternoon  I  saw  her  deliberately  alter  the 
score.  Once  she  put  back  a  card  she  had  actu- 
ally led  from  dummy,  and  said  with  all  the 
coolness  in  the  world,  "I  adjust."  I  was  so 
disgusted  that  when  I  got  home  I  declared 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    147 

that  I  never  saw  such  an  old  hypocrite;  but 
Sherman  made  me  think  differently.  He  says 
she  is  perfectly  sincere,  but  that  she  can't  see 
that  there  is  anything  morally  wrong  in  cheat- 
ing at  cards.  I  broke  out  at  him,  but  he  had  in 
five  minutes  brought  me  so  near  to  saying  that 
I  did  n't  see  anything  very  bad  in  fixing  over  a 
bridge-score  that  I  stopped  with  a  gasp,  and 
agreed  with  anything  he  said.  If  you  ever 
have  a  husband  that  can  tangle  you  up  in  your 
own  words  as  mine  can  me,  you  will  under- 
stand that  the  discussion  was  not  renewed. 
You  think  it  hateful  of  him,  don't  you  ?  It 
is,  my  dear;  but  it  is  awfully  fascinating,  the 
way  he  does  it! 

It  is  stupid  to  be  out  of  the  current,  and  one 
hates  to  be  a  prig  by  seeming  to  pose  as  a  mor- 
alist. I  generally  say  simply  that  I  don't  know 
that  there's  anything  wrong  in  playing  for 
money  if  anybody  chooses,  but  that  I  don't 
wish  to  do  it.  Sometimes  I  say  with  a  little 
malice  that  I  can't  afford  to  play  for  money 
because  I  cannot  afford  to  lose,  but  that  is 
when  I  know  those  I  'm  talking  to  really  can- 
not afford  it.  The  moral  hocus-pocus  of  some 


148  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

women  over  the  business  of  taking  money  is 
enough  to  make  one  dizzy.  Why,  Mrs.  Stan- 
ton has  made  her  house  into  a  regular  gam- 
bHng  saloon,  and  a  lot  of  young  men  who  have 
small  salaries  have  played  there  in  a  way  that 
is  the  scandal  of  the  town ;  and  she  is  so  con- 
scientious that  although  she  allows  all  this, 
and  lets  her  stepdaughters  take  all  the  stakes 
they  can  win  from  guests  that  have  n't  a  tenth 
—  or  a  hundredth,  for  that  matter  —  of  their 
money,  she  forbids  them  to  take  money  from 
each  other !  The  whole  thing  is  horrid,  and  as 
vulgar  as  it  can  be! 

Not  long  ago  I  was  in  Washington,  and  I 
went  to  a  reception  at  Mrs.  Stuart  Camp- 
bell's. I  went  to  a  dinner  first,  and  we  arrived 
about  half  past  eleven.  I  had  been  told  that  all 
Washington  would  be  there,  and  I  was  sur- 
prised to  find  the  hostess  and  twenty  people  or 
so,  mostly  foreign  legation  folk,  sitting  starkly 
in  the  drawing-room.  I  did  n't  in  the  least 
understand  it,  but  after  a  while  Mrs.  Camp- 
bell wanted  to  show  her  ballroom  to  one  of 
the  guests,  and  so  she  asked  those  who  chose 
to  come  along.    The  room  was  magnificent; 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    149 

and  after  we  had  seen  it,  the  guest  who  was 
being  shown  about  said  something  about  the 
rest  of  the  house.  So  we  were  led  on,  and 
presently  we  came  upon  a  whole  suite  of  card- 
rooms,  and  here,  Heaven  save  the  mark !  was 
Washington  society  playing  bridge  like  mad. 
They  looked  as  though  even  the  intrusion  of 
the  hostess  was  an  impertinence,  and  we  did 
not  linger.  We  were  led  down  a  winding  stair 
with  an  onyx  rail,  and  here  was  more  card- 
playing,  and  we  were  offered  whiskey  and 
soda  and  cigarettes !  It  made  me  sick !  I  am, 
I  suppose,  frightfully  conservative,  and  I  own 
to  generations  and  generations  of  Puritan 
ancestors  that  I  'm  proud  of,  so  perhaps  I  've 
no  right  to  say  how  the  whole  thing  struck  me. 
But  at  least  I  thanked  Heaven  I  had  no  son  in 
that  company,  and  I  resented  the  report  the 
members  of  the  legations  might  give  abroad  of 
Washington  receptions. 

Now,  my  dear,  this  is  a  sermon  and  no 
mistake;  but  do  find  something  more  respec- 
table to  do  than  to  help  along  the  bridge- 
madness.  You  will  get  amusement  enough 
without  it;  and  if  you  can't,  I  think  you  had 


150   A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

better    try  to    make   shift   with    self-respect 
instead ! 

P.  S.  You've  never  answered  my  question 
about  the  man  at  the  hunt-breakfast.  Is  he 
the  same  one  you  met  in  the  park? 


XVII 

VULGARITY  RAIVIPANT 

Oh,  my  dear  goddaughter,  I  have  just  come 
from  Barport,  and  I  am  simply  sick  with  dis- 
gust! I  am  ashamed  to  be  an  American,  to  be 
a  woman,  to  be  anything  that  has  any  relation 
to  the  society  leaders  who  have  been  running 
after  Lord  Colcester.  The  shamelessness  of 
it,  and  the  vulgarity,  made  me  feel  that  no- 
thing on  earth  would  induce  me  ever  again  to 
speak  to  any  man  with  a  title.  It  was  worse 
than  any  tuft-hunting  even  in  England,  and 
I  have  seen  some  tall  specimens  of  the  sport 
there. 

Lord  Colcester's  mother  and  mine  were 
dear  friends  in  their  girlhood  ages  ago,  and  of 
course  it  was  natural  that  he  should  be  civil 
to  me,  and  that  I  should  like  him  to  be. 
He  is  agreeable  and  polished,  too;  and  I 
should  n't  have  been  human  if  I  had  not  felt 
some  satisfaction,  when   all   Barport  society 


152  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

was  squabbling  over  him  as  if  he  were  the 
prize  at  a  cake-walk,  that  he  should  take  me 
out  driving.  I  should  n't  have  been  a  woman 
if  I  had  n't  put  on  my  very  best  frock  and  hat, 
and  been  set  up;  but  if  you'd  seen  the  way 
people  bowed  to  me,  and  smiled  at  me,  and 
simpered  at  me,  just  because  I  was  on  the  seat 
of  Lord  Colcester's  trap,  you  'd  have  turned 
cynic  on  the  spot.  People  I  did  n't  know  and 
would  n't  know,  and  for  that  matter  people 
with  so  much  money  that  on  most  occasions 
they  would  n't  take  the  trouble  to  know  me, 
were  so  super-ecstatically  polite  that  I  could 
have  killed  them !  And  killed  myself,  too,  for 
having  to  bow,  and  smile,  and  simper  back! 

We  met  old  Mrs.  Fitzdagon  with  jewels  all 
over  her  carriage-dress,  —  as  I  live  she  had 
diamonds  on  her  bonnet  and  all  spattered  over 
her;  lace-pins  as  big  as  nutmegs,  and  that  sort 
of  thing.  She  was  driving  in  state  with  her 
footmen  —  and  handmen,  for  aught  I  know ; 
at  least  she  had  every  kind  of  an  attendant 
she  could  think  of,  and  would  have  added 
outriders,  I've  no  doubt,  if  she'd  ever  heard 
of  them.    I've  refused  to  know  that  woman, 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   153 

though  here  and  abroad  I  've  met  her  a  dozen 
times.  I  could  stomach  the  fact  that  her  father 
was  a  barkeeper  and  her  mother  a  cook,  if 
she  were  decent;  but  as  it  is,  I  draw  the  Hue 
at  Mrs.  Fitzdagon,  no  matter  how  many  mil- 
lions she  has,  or  what  her  parties  cost.  She  is 
not  only  a  vulgar  woman,  but  she  is  a  bad  one. 
I  've  cut  her  so  brutally  I  've  been  ashamed  to 
look  in  the  glass  for  days,  even  to  see  my  back- 
hair,  for  fear  I  should  meet  my  own  eye ! 

Well,  we  met  her  on  the  avenue.  She  put 
up  her  lorgnette,  —  gold,  of  course,  with  dia- 
monds stuck  on  at  all  possible  places !  —  and 
when  she  saw  his  lordship,  she  broke  into  a 
smile  so  broad  that  it  stuck  out  over  each  side 
of  her  landeau.  She  looked  like  an  enormous 
Cheshire  cat  set  in  diamonds.  She  did  n't 
know  Lord  Colcester  except  by  sight,  but  she 
bowed  to  him  with  as  much  effusion  as  if  he 
were  her  long-lost  youth,  — to  him,  mind  you, 
for  she  looked  directly  at  him,  —  but  she 
threw  a  kiss  at  me !  I  positively  dodged !  I  felt 
as  if,  if  that  kiss  struck  me,  1  should  catch 
some  dreadful  malady!  I  was  so  angry  that 
I  could  have  killed  the  raddled  old  thing.    I 


154  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

looked  her  straight  in  the  face,  and  cut  her 
absolutely.  Now  should  n't  you  think  that 
was  enough  to  settle  things  for  any  woman,  for 
that  day  at  least  ?  It  nearly  settled  me.  I  hate 
to  cut  anybody.  It  reminds  me  of  what  an  old 
coachman  of  ours  said  once  about  drowning 
kittens.  "If  the  cat '11  have  'em,  I've  got  to 
drown  'em;  but  if  the  old  beast  knew  how  I 
hates  the  job,  she'd  stop havin'  'em."  It  must 
be  a  great  deal  worse  to  cut  a  human  being 
than  to  drown  a  poor  little  blind  kitten,  bad  as 
that  must  be ;  and  I  do  think  that  when  I  've 
been  through  the  ghastly  business,  at  least  the 
woman  might  stay  cut.  But  Mrs.  Fitzdagon, 
not  she !  Half  an  hour  later  we  met  her  again, 
and  if  you'll  believe  it,  she  stopped  us! 
Stopped  us,  right  there  in  the  middle  of  the 
avenue!  I  really  felt  myself  grow  so  cold  I 
thought  I  might  faint  on  the  spot;  but  I  held 
up  my  head,  and  looked  at  her  as  if  I  had 
never  seen  her  before.  I  did  wish  I  had  a 
lorgnette ! 

"You  don't  remember  me,  I'm  afraid," 
was  what  she  said. 

"Really,"  I  said,  "I  must  confess  I  do  not." 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    155 

It  was  perfectly  brutal,  but  how  could  I  help 
it  ?  I  could  n't  have  been  decent  to  her,  if  I 
had  known  I  was  to  be  shot  for  not  giving  in. 

"I  am  Mrs.  Reginald  Fitzdagon,"  she  re- 
marked. 

*'Yes.^"  I  said,  as  if  the  name  conveyed 
nothing  on  earth  to  me. 

That  stab  got  through  all  her  diamonds,  — 
and  her  brass  too,  for  that  matter,  —  and  I 
could  see  the  veins  begin  to  stand  out  on  her 
forehead.  I  had  not  the  nerve  to  keep  on,  so  I 
said,  just  as  she  called  me  by  name,  too:  "I 
see  you  must  have  mistaken  me  for  somebody 
else.  We  will  drive  on,  if  you  please,  Lord 
Colcester." 

What  he  thought,  I  have  n't  an  idea.  I  try  to 
believe  he  must  have  sense  enough  to  have 
taken  in  the  situation;  but  he  may  have  sup- 
posed I  was  so  elated  by  being  seen  with  him 
that  I  would  n't  acknowledge  my  best  friends. 
But  if  he  thinks  me  capable  of  that,  or  of  hav- 
ing a  woman  like  Mrs.  Fitzdagon  for  a  friend, 
he  is  welcome  to  think  anything  else  about  me 
that  he  chooses.  Besides,  even  if  he  is  a  man, 
and  a  foreigner  who  is  not  supposed  to  know 


156  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

American  ways,  he  cannot  be  so  stupid  as  not 
to  have  seen  that  she  was  tlirusting  herself  on 
us  just  to  get  an  introduction.  It  was  horrid, 
though.  It  does  seem  to  me  that  a  thing  hke 
that  —  having  to  be  nasty  just  for  decency's 
sake,  and  because  one  owes  it  to  society  —  is 
about  the  worst  social  experience  one  has  to  go 
through  with.  I  was  so  used  up  by  meeting 
Mrs.  Fitzdagon  and  having  to  snub  her  in 
that  way  that  I  had  a  frightful  headache  all 
the  rest  of  the  day;  and  I  don't  care  any 
more  for  the  old  horror  than  I  do  for  a  toad.  I 
really  don't!  And  that  is  the  way  we  women 
are  made! 

And  after  all,  Mrs.  Fitzdagon  was  not  much 
worse  than  no  end  of  women  at  Barport  who 
are  supposed  to  be  at  the  head  of  American 
society.  People  who  had  simply  met  Lord 
Colcester  at  a  party,  and  had  not  exchanged 
five  words  with  him,  sent  him  invitations  to 
dinner  next  day,  and  overwhelmed  him  with 
attentions.  Half  the  time  they  absolutely 
ignored  the  Daltons,  with  whom  he  was  stay- 
ing, because  the  Daltons  are  not  in  the  smart- 
est of  the  "smart"   set!      They  haven't   a 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    157 

divorcee  in  the  family !  He  must  have  been  dis- 
gusted. A  foreigner  may  feel  that  he  is  of  a 
good  deal  of  importance,  and  yet  have  only 
contempt  for  the  people  who  toady  to  him  too 
openly.  Mrs.  Dalton  told  me  that  Lord  Col- 
cester  only  said  that  he  had  never  known 
"hospitality  so  pressing"! 

Heavens !  What  a  letter  I  have  written ;  and 
I  only  meant  to  say  that  I  have  given  Lord 
Colcester  a  letter  to  your  people,  and  that  I  do 
hope  you  will  show  him  that  an  American  girl 
can  be  a  lady,  and  not  go  stick,  stark,  whirling 
mad  at  the  sight  of  a  minor  member  of  the 
British  aristocracy.  I  have  written  to  your 
father  about  him,  and  he  will  give  you  par- 
ticulars. 

You  may  flirt  with  Lord  Colcester  all  you 
like,  but  do  snub  him  a  little.  It  will  be  good 
for  him,  and  it  will  be  a  change  after  the  way 
the  girls  at  Barport  have  fawned  on  him.  I  am 
sure  you  have  too  good  sense  to  take  an  affair 
of  the  kind  seriously;  but  snubbing  is  really 
the  way  to  impress  him! 


XVIII 

"AND  WOULD  MY  LADY  BE  DESIRED?" 

You  ask  me  a  question,  my  ingenuous  god- 
child, which  goes  straight  to  the  heart  of  the 
life  of  every  woman  that  ever  was,  now  is,  or 
ever  shall  be.  I  hardly  know  whether  to  laugh 
or  to  cry  at  the  cool  way  in  which  you  ask  me 
how  a  girl  attracts  a  man !  Why,  you  bunch  of 
innocence,  —  if  you  're  not  a  mouse  of  slyness ! 
—  the  woman  who  knows  that  secret  may  rule 
the  world.  I  doubt  if  even  she,  however,  could 
tell  you  how  she  did  it.  Cleopatra  might  give 
you  a  course  of  intimate  lectures  on  the  subject, 
and  explain  to  you  the  whole  bag  of  tricks,  — 
that's  slang,  my  dear;  never  under  any  cir- 
cumstances use  slang,  it  is  so  unladylike  for  a 
goddaughter!  —  but  when  the  old  Serpent  of 
the  Nile  had  told  you  exactly  how  she  beguiled 
Antony,  she  would  n't  have  touched  the  heart 
of  the  matter.  You  or  I  or  anybody  else  who 
tried  the  same  methods  simply  would  n't  arrive. 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    159 

The  secret  certainly  is  too  elusive  to  be  put 
into  words,  and  I  have  the  strongest  doubts 
whether  it  is  to  be  mastered  by  study.  It  is 
like  genius,  it  is  born  in  a  woman  or  she  goes 
without  it;  for  that  matter,  it  is  genius,  if 
there  is  such  a  thing  in  this  incomprehensible 
world.  Nature  makes  some  women  with  a 
quality  that  attracts  men  as  catnip  attracts 
cats.  The  most  absolutely  woodeny  men  alive 
used  to  prick  up  their  ears  and  sniff  with 
their  nostrils  the  moment  Adelaide  Trent  came 
in  sight,  and  she  was  as  homely  as  a  calico 
doll.  Other  women  are  better  and  sweeter  and 
nobler,  are  more  beautiful,  more  witty,  and 
every  creature  of  their  own  sex  knows  they 
are  worth  dozens  of  the  fascinators ;  but  they 
no  more  have  the  power  of  getting  hold  of 
masculine  heartstrings  than  heliotrope  or 
mignonette  of  enchanting  the  senses  of  the 
tabbies  and  tommies  of  the  back  alleys.  How 
do  they  do  it  ?  My  dear,  the  hope  of  finding 
out  is  one  of  the  few  things  that  reconciles  me 
to  the  Day  of  Judgment. 

Though  neither  I  nor  any  other  live  mortal 
can  tell  you  the  secret,  however,  every  woman 


160  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

has  her  theories,  and  some  things  bearing  on 
the  subject  are  worthy  of  your  consideration. 
My  friend  Mrs.  Toinbee  used  to  say  that  she 
would  make  any  girl  a  success  with  the  men, 
who  would  follow  her  directions.  She  de- 
clared that  she  did  n't  care  if  the  girl  was  poor 
and  ugly  and  dull;  she  was  sure  she  could 
manage,  if  only  her  rules  were  followed.  I 
told  her  once  that  she  was  pretending  to  no- 
thing less  than  omnipotence;  and  she  flashed 
back:  "Oh,  no:  I'm  only  pretending  to  un- 
derstand something  about  the  simplest  ani- 
mals in  creation,  the  men."  She  was  not  so 
far  from  right  about  the  men.  They  are  simple 
because  you  can,  if  you  are  clever  enough, 
reason  out  what  a  man  will  do;  but  nobody 
could  tell  about  a  woman. 

Of  course  I  don't  for  a  minute  believe  Mrs. 
Toinbee  was  entirely  right,  but  although  she 
was  extravagant,  there  was  a  lot  of  sense  in 
her  ideas.  She  believed  that  the  chief  thing  is 
to  pique  a  man  into  thinking  that  he  is  of  no 
consequence  to  a  girl,  and  so  work  on  his  van- 
ity. She  was  always  saying  that  the  girls  make 
themselves  too  cheap,  and  that  any  one  of 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    161 

them  who  held  herself  dear  was  sure  to  be 
sought  after.  The  truth  is,  that  the  modern 
young  man  is  so  spoiled  that  nothing  can  be 
predicted  of  him  with  any  certainty  except 
that  he  will  assume  that  he  is  adorable,  and 
that  he  will  expect  adoration  accordingly. 
The  way  in  which  boys  are  pampered  nowa- 
days, and  the  way  they  have  of  seeming  to 
bestow  an  honor  on  a  girl  if  they  look  at  her, 
makes  my  blood  boil !  It  is  the  girls'  fault,  too. 
They  have  very  largely  made  themselves,  with 
their  mannish  ways,  their  slang,  their  strenu- 
ousness,  their  golf,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  a  sort 
of  pale  and  poor  imitation  of  their  brothers. 
Any  w^holesome  boy  finds  it  better  fun  to  asso- 
ciate with  a  real  fellow  than  with  a  bad  imita- 
tion in  petticoats,  and  so  at  balls  you  see  whole 
tables  full  of  young  men,  while  the  host  is 
scurrying  about  trying  to  get  supper-partners 
for  stray  young  women;  you  see  the  matrons 
of  the  dancing-classes  having  constantly  to 
send  into  the  dressing-rooms  to  rout  out  the 
boys,  who  had  rather  get  together  and  smoke 
and  talk  than  to  chat  and  dance  with  the 
girls.  They  are  entirely  right.   I  am  sure  that 


162  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

if  I  were  a  boy,  I'd  much  rather  go  with  my 
kind  than  with  the  mascuhne  girls  of  the  day. 

If  I  get  off  upon  a  discussion  of  the  modern 
girl,  however,  there  is  no  knowing  where  I 
may  bring  up ;  and  it  is  perhaps  better  to  come 
back  to  Mrs.  Toinbee  and  her  theory  that  the 
way  to  gain  the  attention  of  a  young  gentle- 
man is  to  snub  him  judiciously.  I  said  some- 
thing of  the  sort  to  you  in  a  letter  a  little  while 
ago,  and  I  don't  wish  to  repeat  myself;  but 
her  words  are  worth  quoting.  "If  a  girl  will 
only  be  difficult,"  she  used  to  say,  "the  men 
will  run  after  her  fast  enough.  They'll  take 
without  a  '  thank  you '  all  the  favors  of  a  bud 
that  is  fool  enough  to  let  them  see  she  is  flat- 
tered by  their  notice;  and  they  will  be  con- 
vinced that  the  obligation  is  all  on  her  side. 
A  man  never  really  cares  for  a  woman  who 
shows  that  she  is  grateful  to  him  for  noticing 
her;  and  as  for  the  woman  who  all  but  asks 
him  to  attend  to  her,  he  is  sure  in  the  end  to 
despise  her.  That's  the  way  the  world  is 
made." 

No  generality  is  without  its  exceptions ;  and 
you  are  too  young  to  see  the  full  force  of  Mrs. 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    163 

Toinbee's  wisdom.  I  do  hope,  however,  that 
you  will  get  it  into  your  head  that  it  is  your 
business  to  impress  on  every  man  who  comes 
in  your  way  that  you  honor  him  by  accepting 
his  homage.  I  wrote  you  of  the  Southern  girl 
who  has  been  here  this  winter.  She  was  a  liv- 
ing proof  of  the  fact  that  if  you  will  conde- 
scend to  the  men,  they  will  inevitably  believe 
you  are  above  them,  and  thereby  desirable. 
Men  and  women  never  met  on  an  equal  foot- 
ing yet,  except  when  they  were  still  in  love 
after  years  of  married  life,  —  and  perhaps  not 
even  then!  One  or  the  other  will  inevitably 
take  the  attitude  of  bestowing,  and  if  you 
want  to  hold  a  man,  you  must  insist  upon  being 
the  one  who  graciously  gives.  That  is  my 
interpretation  of  "She  Stoops  to  Conquer." 
If  you  accept  a  flower  or  bestow  a  dance,  let 
the  man  feel  that  the  chances  were  strongly 
against  your  doing  either,  and  that  he  may 
bless  his  liicky  stars  for  your  being  willing  to 
favor  him. 

I  was  so  exasperated  not  long  ago,  when  I 
had  to  chaperon  Alice  Carthuen  at  the  Tre- 
fethern  ball,  that  I  could  have  fallen  upon  her 


164  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

and  sliaken  her.  She  is  as  pretty  as  a  rose,  and 
her  frock  was  perfectly  wonderful,  the  loveli- 
est shade  of  pale  blue,  with  the  tiniest  silver 
spangles  in  it  as  thick  as  they  could  be,  and 
the  most  enchanting  curly  ruffles  round  the 
bottom  of  the  skirt  coming  up  in  the  most 
deliciously  unexpected  sort  of  curves;  her 
mother  had  her  dresses  made  in  Paris,  and 
Lily  Carthuen  —  she  was  Lily  Kent;  we  used 
to  make  mud  pies  together  in  the  Public 
Garden  —  always  did  have  w^onderful  taste 
in  dress.  But  Alice  —  I  have  lost  my  place 
somehow;  but  what  I  w^anted  to  say  was  that 
Alice,  though  of  one  of  the  best  families,  with 
no  end  of  money,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  was  so 
humble  that  it  was  pitiful.  If  a  man  asked  her 
to  dance,  she  had  the  air  of  being  as  grateful 
as  if  he'd  given  her  his  last  crust  to  save  her 
from  starvation!  It  was  perfectly  maddening 
to  sit  there  and  see  her! 

Then  in  the  cotillion  that  girl  was  a  sight  to 
make  angels  weep.  What  boys  do  you  think 
she  took  out  ?  Why,  simply  those  that  every- 
body else  was  after.  She  had  n't  an  idea  in  her 
head  except  to  follow  the  others,  and  to  help 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    165 

pamper  the  conceited  fools  who  thought  they 
were  so  irresistible  that  of  course  every  girl 
was  after  them.  If  she  had  only  had  the  wit  to 
slight  them  entirely,  they'd  have  noticed;  she 
might  have  trusted  their  vanity  for  that.  As  it 
was,  she  was  only  one  of  a  crowd.  She  had  n't 
a  partner  who  had  n't  a  lordly  air  of  expecting 
attention,  and  of  conferring  honor  by  accept- 
ing the  favor  she  handed  him.  I  think  I  really 
might  have  shaken  her,  if  it  had  n't  been  that 
I  knew  she'd  come  out  of  her  frock.  I  was 
just  behind  her,  and  I  tried  to  make  her  take 
out  some  of  the  really  nice  boys  that  don't 
happen  to  be  the  fashion  in  her  set;  but  she 
only  looked  surprised,  and  said:  "Why,  any- 
body could  get  him."  The  stupidity  of  it 
was  beyond  anything.  Instead  of  making  her 
favors  tell  by  giving  them  to  boys  who  were 
really  capital  fellows  and  who  would  have 
been  grateful,  she  wasted  her  whole  evening, 
and  went  home  without  having  made  a  real 
impression  upon  any  human  being  except 
myself,  —  and  my  impression  came  from  my 
indignation. 

You  will  easily  believe  that  I  read  Alice  a 


166   A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

lesson  over  that  dance,  but  I  probably  had 
no  effect  upon  her.  She  cannot  understand 
that  of  course  a  man,  and  especially  the  mod- 
ern young  man,  thinks  he  is  conferring  a 
favor  if  he  asks  a  girl  to  dance.  What  he  needs 
is  to  have  his  vanity  snubbed  and  his  conceit 
taken  down  a  peg.  He  will  remember  the  girl 
who  does  it,  and  he  will  be  very  likely  to  set 
himself  to  work  to  prove  that  he  is  really  irre- 
sistible by  bringing  her  to  his  feet.  Then  she 
has  her  opportunity. 

But  I  have  not  time  for  a  single  word  more 
to-night.    I  must  go  and  dress. 

P.  S.  You  need  n't  ignore  my  questions 
about  that  mysterious  man.  It  only  makes  me 
suspicious.  I  may  remind  you  that  I  have 
other  correspondents  beside  yourself. 


XIX 

"MOST  RARE  IS  MOST  DESIRED" 

This  letter  should  be  headed  like  the  chapters 
in  the  old-fashioned  stories:  "The  same  sub- 
ject continued."  I  was  just  in  the  middle  of 
what  I  had  to  say:  at  least,  I  had  n't  said  half 
I  intended.  I  was  so  full  of  what  I  had  been 
writing  that  I  brought  the  subject  up  that 
night  at  a  dinner,  and  after  we  left  the  men, 
we  women  talked  about  it.  The  thing  they 
insisted  upon  was  that  it  was  all  very  well 
for  a  girl  who  had  a  lot  of  attention  to  take 
on  airs,  but  that  if  she  was  neglected,  she 
could  n't  begin.  I  said  this  was  all  non- 
sense. 

Then  Mrs.  Tavish  said  that  of  course  every 
girl  had  some  partners,  and  that  I  was  right. 
The  thing  was  for  her  not  to  act  as  if  she  was 
surprised  to  be  asked. 

"Don't  you  know,"  she  went  on,  "the  de- 
testable,   grateful    way    some   girls    have    of 


168  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

receiving  the  smallest  attention  ?  Of  course 
the  men  hate  it.    I  should,  if  I  were  a  man." 

"I'm  not  sure  that  the  men  feel  that  way 
about  it,"  Mrs.  Manners  observed,  —  she  has 
a  cool,  deliberate  way  of  speaking  that  always 
gives  a  peculiar  flavor  to  whatever  she  says, 
—  "I  think  the  men  are  flattered  by  that 
sort  of  thing.  The  point  is,  that  they  get  so 
much  of  that  sort  of  flattery,  they  cease  to 
care  for  it.  They  really  like  a  sauce  piquante 
better." 

Of  course  it  is  very  easy  —  and  very  de- 
testable —  to  go  to  the  other  extreme.  There 
is  nothing  more  hateful  than  the  modern  type 
of  girl,  who  is  coarsely  buoyant  and  mannish, 
and  who  tries  to  treat  the  men,  poor  idiot,  as 
if  she  were  one  of  themselves.  She  fools  no- 
body but  herself.  The  men  are  not  taken  in, 
and  all  her  airs  of  accepting  favors  as  a  matter 
of  course  between  comrades  are  too  evidently 
nonsense  to  deceive  anybody,  —  least  of  all 
the  men.  Between  men  and  women  in  society 
nothing  of  this  sort  is  possible,  except  in  the 
exceedingly  rare  cases  where  especial  circum- 
stances and  unusual  temperaments  make  a 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    169 

platonic  comradeship;  —  and  even  then  I 
don't  beheve  it  is  real.  No  woman  thinks  a 
platonic  friendship  possible  except  for  herself. 
She  knows  that  between  a  man  and  any  other 
woman  it  is  a  sham,  and  as  I  always  frankly 
went  in  for  a  flirtation  or  nothing,  I  have  no 
illusions  in  the  line  of  a  man  and  a  woman's 
being  good  fellows  together.  Men  know  what 
such  pretences  are  worth,  and  either  think  the 
woman  who  believes  in  them  is  a  fool,  or  that 
she  is  trying  to  fool  them.  It  is  better,  even  in 
these  strong-minded  days,  to  be  limp  and 
clinging  than  mannish  —  when  it  comes  to 
getting  a  husband.  The  limp  girl  at  least  ap- 
peals to  a  man's  chivalry  and  to  his  vanity, 
and  if  she  is  like  wet  paper,  she  is  much  more 
apt  to  stick.  The  mannish  girl  gets  married, 
of  course ;  but  she  generally  takes  up  with  the 
dull,  horsey  man,  and  she  is  rather  apt  to  stop 
at  the  divorce-court  as  one  of  the  stations  of 
her  way  through  life. 

The  thing  I  am  advising  is  not  haughtiness ; 
still  less  is  it  snubbing.  It  is  a  simple,  sweet, 
but  absolutely  unfailing  recognition  of  the 
superiority  of  your  sex.  Be  as  agreeable  as  you 


170  THE   COUNSELS  OF 

know  how  to  be,  my  dear ;  be  as  flexible  as 
good  breeding  will  let  you  be;  never  be  snob- 
bish, and  never  snub  anybody  unless  you  are 
absolutely  forced  to  it,  —  but  never  for  one 
moment,  asleep  or  awake,  fail  to  keep  in  mind 
that  you  are  bound  —  until  you  marry!  —  to 
insist  upon  the  absolute  superiority  of  your 
sex.  Never  say  it;  just  live  it.  Make  it  a  sort 
of  atmosphere  about  you.  Naturally,  if  you 
play  your  part  so  poorly  as  to  make  this  seem 
like  personal  pride,  you  will  be  misunderstood, 
and  perhaps  to  a  certain  extent  disliked;  but 
even  in  that  case,  your  smiles  will  be  of  double 
worth  where  you  do  give  them.  I  should  hate 
to  have  you  proud,  and  a  hundred  times  worse 
should  I  hate  to  have  you  seem  proud  in  any 
snobbish  way;  but  you  are  bound  to  uphold 
the  pride  of  your  sex.  You  have  a  moral  duty 
to  perform  in  impressing  on  a  generation  of 
puffed-up  and  willful  young  men  the  fact  of 
their  inferiority.  Keep  this  in  mind,  —  gently 
and  sweetly,  but  firmly. 

If  you  can  carry  this  out  successfully,  you 
will  know  the  supreme  satisfaction  of  having 
achieved  a  great  ethical  triumph,  which  is  n't 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    171 

a  great  deal  to  a  girl  in  itself ;  and  also  — 
what  is  of  the  greatest  possible  consequence, 
—  of  having,  by  means  of  achieving  it,  been 
a  tremendous  social  success. 

You  come  back  in  your  own  mind,  I  dare 
say,  to  the  thing  Mrs.  Caldwell  kept  getting 
back  to  in  that  talk  the  other  night. 

"Yes;  but  how  do  you  begin.?"  she  kept 
asking.  "A  girl  can't  condescend  to  a  man 
when  he  does  n't  look  at  her,  or  come  her  way. 
He  would  n't  know  it  if  she  did." 

This  is  more  of  an  objection  in  theory  than 
it  really  is  in  practice.  Every  girl  of  decent 
position  must  have  some  attention.  If  she  has 
any  friends,  they  must  give  her  dinners,  and 
at  balls  she  must  at  any  rate  be  taken  out  now 
and  then  by  the  men  that  know  her  people, 
that  have  had  her  for  a  dinner-partner,  and  so 
on.  The  point  is,  that  she  should,  if  she  has 
to  sit  alone,  cultivate  the  art  of  seeming  to  be 
perfectly  contented ;  that  she  should  give  the 
one  only  dance  she  has  a  chance  to  give  in  an 
evening,  poor  thing,  as  if  she  half  wondered 
whether  she  should  be  so  good-natured  as  to 
do  it.    If  she  sits  openly  beseeching  with  her 


172  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

eyes  every  man  that  goes  past  her  to  come 
and  take  her  out,  and  if  when  one  stops  she 
greets  him  with  the  grateful  fervor  of  Andro- 
meda welcoming  What 's-his-name  when  he 
appeared  just  in  time  to  save  her  from  being 
crunched  into  lamb  chops  by  the  dragon,  then 
the  whole  situation  is  lost.  The  man  goes 
away  with  the  feeling  of  having  been  a  mag- 
nificent benefactor,  and  the  conviction  that  he 
has  done  his  w  hole  duty  for  a  good  long  time. 
He  is  n't  running  after  that  girl  very  soon,  you 
may  be  sure. 

The  modern  fashion  of  dividing  dances  I 
suppose  it  is  of  no  use  for  me  to  say  anything 
about.  It  is  thoroughly  vulgar;  it  has  no  pos- 
sible excuse,  except  that  it  gives  the  popular 
girls  a  chance  to  show  off;  and  it  cannot  last 
very  long.  If  I  were  a  man,  I  would  have  a 
whole  dance,  or  I  would  let  a  girl  alone;  but 
the  fact  that  men  will  fight  for  a  little  scrap 
illustrates  what  I've  been  saying.  The  only 
reason  men  will  go  in  for  it  is  for  the  sake  of 
])eing  able  to  swagger  as  one  of  the  half  dozen 
among  whom  a  waltz  was  divided,  just  as 
the  girl  finds  her  pleasure  in  being  able  to  say 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    173 

she  had  n't  a  dance  that  was  n't  all  chopped 
up,  she  was  so  sought  after.  You  must  do  as 
the  "lave"  do,  I  suppose;  for  you  probably 
have  n't  the  moral  courage  to  declare  that  you 
won't  divide  your  dances. 

You  said  in  your  last  that  the  trouble  with 
my  advice  is  that  it  would  take  a  girl  just  like 
me  to  follow  it.  Perhaps;  but  at  least  you 
can't  say  —  I  thank  Heaven  I  've  a  clear  record 
to  prove  it!  —  that  I'm  preaching  things  that 
I  have  not  proved  are  compatible  with  pretty 
shining  social  success !  It  is  n't  vanity  any 
more  for  me  to  say  this,  for  I  've  owned  that 
I'm  a  dowager. 

My  husband  has  undertaken  to  criticise  my 
letters.  He  saw  me  writing  one,  and  noticed 
how  long  it  was,  and  began  to  make  re- 
marks. I  gave  it  to  him  to  read,  to  keep  him 
still.  He  followed  the  usual  irritating  mas- 
culine fashion  of  saying  nothing  for  a  while. 
Men  try  to  make  us  think  they  are  consid- 
ering whether  we  could  understand  their 
comments,  when  really  they  are  trying  hard 
to  think  of  something  to  say.   To-day,  when  he 


174   A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

saw  me  writing  again,  he  said:  "I  thought 
you  were  a  cleverer  woman."  He  got  his  rise, 
of  course,  for  I  asked  what  he  meant.  "I 
thought  you  knew  that  no  woman  ever 
wanted  to  have  advice  thrust  on  her,"  he 
said.  I  looked  at  him  in  a  way  that  might 
mean  anything,  because  of  course  it  really  did 
mean  nothing.  "  I  thought  you  were  a  cleverer 
man,"  I  said  at  last.  "As  how.^"  he  asked, 
rising  beautifully  in  his  turn.  "I  thought  you 
knew,"  I  answered,  "that  at  least  every  wo- 
man likes  to  give  advice.  I  am  giving  it."  I 
shan't  let  him  see  any  more  of  the  letters. 
You  need  n't  be  afraid.  I  know  you  would  n't 
feel  like  following  what  I  said,  if  you  thought 
a  man  had  read  it. 


XX 

PLAYING  THE  SOCIAL  GAME 

I  HOPE  that  in  my  last  I  did  not  give  you  the 
impression  that  social  success  depends  upon 
the  men.  That  is  nonsense.  It  is  all  very  well 
for  a  woman  to  be  popular  with  the  men,  and 
that  is  what  we  all  hope  for;  but  if  women 
don't  make  a  girl  a  success,  the  rest  counts 
for  little.  Women  are  bound  to  take  up  a  girl 
that  men  admire,  and  she  has  to  be  invited 
about ;  but  after  all,  the  women  arbitrate. 
The  men  do  not  even,  I  believe,  decide  what 
girls  they  will  admire  most.  Once  in  a  while 
a  woman  has  a  power  of  making  every  man 
run  after  her,  and  she  'd  rather  have  that  than 
social  success ;  but  social  success  it  is  not,  nor 
does  it  lead  to  it.  Women  make  society,  keep 
it  going,  and  it  would  be  hard  indeed  if  they 
could  not  have  the  final  voice  in  regard  to  who 
shall  succeed. 

Keep  on  the  right  side  of  the  women,  my 


176  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

dear  goddaughter,  and  especially  of  the  wo- 
men of  my  age.  It  is  well,  and  it  is  above  all 
graceful,  to  be  nice  to  the  old  women;  but  it 
is  n't  their  opinion  that  counts  most.  The 
opinion  of  the  middle-aged  woman  is  the 
voice  of  society,  —  and  indeed  it  is  the  voice 
of  the  world.  The  mothers  of  the  buds  are  the 
ones  for  you  to  consider.  If  you  win  them, 
your  position  is  established;  and  what  you 
cannot  realize  is  the  fact  that  they  will  do  you 
more  good  with  the  men  than  any  other  thing. 
What  you  want  is  that  the  mother  of  every  bud 
shall  regard  you  as  the  debutante  of  the  sea- 
son who  is  second  only  to  her  own  daughter. 
You  can't  expect  anything  more.  Indeed,  if  a 
woman  thinks  you  outdo  her  own,  she  will 
instinctively  be  against  you.  The  most  hum- 
ble-bee-dumble-dee  woman  —  as  we  used  to 
say  —  will  not  set  you  above  her  daughter, 
but  you  should  try  to  have  her  put  you  next. 
There  is  some  sort  of  a  story  or  other  about 
somebody  who  achieved  something  tremen- 
dous simply  because  he  was  the  second  choice 
of  everybody.  Lay  the  moral  of  that  instruc- 
tive fable  to  heart. 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    177 

It  is  the  mothers  of  the  buds  who  have 
decided  whether  you  should  be  admitted  to 
the  dancing-classes  before  you  were  out;  and 
they  have  discussed  you  so  thoroughly,  my 
dear,  that  if  political  candidates  could  be  half 
as  well  analyzed,  government  would  be  revo- 
lutionized. They  settle  who  shall  be  the  guests 
at  dinners,  —  the  real  dinners  that  count; 
they  decide  all  sorts  of  social  questions.  They 
even  do  most  of  the  selecting  when  the  men 
give  theatre-parties  or  coaching-parties;  and 
so  on  through  the  whole  chapter.  Do  you  sup- 
pose a  man  gives  parties  for  girls  that  the 
ladies  of  authority  choose  to  be  a  little  diffi- 
cult about  chaperoning.^ 

To  propitiate  the  mothers  is  n't  so  difficult, 
if  you  will  only  keep  it  in  mind  that  it  is  worth 
your  while  to  be  nice.  It  is  somewhat  harder 
than  it  sounds,  but  it  is  simple.  It  takes 
thought  and  care  to  improve  the  little  oppor- 
tunities of  making  a  good  impression.  On  the 
surface  it  is  part  of  your  business  to  see  when 
the  fan  or  the  handkerchief  drops,  and  if  there 
is  no  man  to  do  it,  to  pick  it  up.  You  are  to  see 
—  quietly  and  not  aggressively,  for  we  women 


178  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

do  hate  to  be  fussed  over;  it  calls  attention 
to  the  fact  that  we  are  beginning  to  be  old 
enough  for  such  things  to  be  of  importance'to 
us !  —  about  seats  and  draughts  and  cushions 
and  shawls.  It  comes  down  in  the  ultimate 
analysis  to  being  thoughtful  about  what  the 
mothers  will  like.  The  world  of  middle-aged 
women,  my  dear,  is  the  touchstone  of  your 
power  of  acting  unselfishly;  and  in  this  case 
unselfishly  means  wisely. 

You  will  not,  no  matter  how  well  you  carry 
out  all  the  advice  I  could  give  you,  be  likely  to 
reap  a  reward  so  substantial  as  that  which  fell 
to  Kate  Stanford.  Old  Mrs.  Pepperell,  who 
was  n't  a  relative  at  all,  and  who  knew  Kate 
only  as  a  girl  visiting  at  the  house,  left  her 
$10,000,  because,  she  said  in  her  will,  Kate 
was  the  only  one  of  the  young  girls  who  came 
there  who  had  always  been  courteous  to  her. 
Of  course  she  was  an  old  lady,  and  Kate  was 
the  friend  of  her  granddaughter,  so  the  case 
is  n't  exactly  the  same;  but  the  rewards  you 
may  win  are  not  the  less  valuable  because  they 
are  less  tangible. 

But  think,  my  dear,  of  all  that  was  implied 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    179 

in  this  bequest.  The  girls  that  old  Mrs.  Pep- 
perell  saw  were  of  good  families;  they  were  not 
ill-natured,  they  were  just  thoughtless.  They 
would  have  been  utterly  amazed  at  the  idea 
of  being  considered  in  the  slightest  degree  ill- 
bred  ;  and  yet  they  seemed  to  a  lady  of  the  old 
school  lacking  in  courtesy.  It  is  all  very  well 
to  say  that  Mrs.  Pepperell  was  an  old  fogy; 
that  nowadays  nobody  expects  any  of  the  anti- 
quated, elaborate  consideration  for  age.  The 
fact  remains  that  the  old-fashioned  ways  pro- 
duce the  effect  of  sweetness,  of  race,  of  polish, 
in  a  way  that  nothing  else  can.  You  may  get 
along  without  it;  but  you  can  win  much  by 
giving  this  effect. 

Young  people  are  continually,  generation 
after  generation,  I  suppose,  holding  that  if 
their  own  set  approve  of  their  ways,  nothing 
else  matters.  It  is  the  question  of  judgment  by 
peers  of  which  I  wrote  awhile  ago ;  but  it  fails 
because  the  younger  set  never  really  rules  the 
social  world.  At  a  ball  in  Baltimore  I  once 
saw  a  young  girl  do  something  so  rude  that  an 
old  gentleman,  a  friend  of  her  father  and  her 
grandfather,  took  her  to  task  for  it.    She  de- 


180  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

clared  that  she  had  acted  as  would  any  girl  of 
her  set  under  the  given  circumstances;  and 
in  the  end  told  him  that  all  she  wanted  was  to 
be  approved  by  those  of  her  own  kind.  "  Very 
good,"  rejoined  the  old  gentleman.  "I  once 
tried  to  make  a  young  pickpocket  see  how  his 
theft  looked  to  me,  and  he  told  me  that,  any- 
way, his  pals  said  he  had  done  a  first-class 
job.  I  am  sorry  you  prefer  the  verdict  of  your 
pals  to  that  of  their  betters."  He  was  right, 
too;  there  is  a  court  of  appeal  —  socially,  I 
mean ;  I  am  not  moralizing !  —  higher  than 
your  "pals." 

What  will  count  most  with  the  mothers, 
more  than  what  you  do  for  them,  is  the  way 
you  treat  their  daughters.  We  are  selfish  and 
worldly  old  things,  no  doubt;  but  we  do  think 
more  of  what  happens  to  our  children  —  un- 
less we  are  abandoned  divorce-court  females, 
who  ought  not  to  count  as  women  at  all !  — 
than  we  do  of  what  happens  to  ourselves.  The 
most  worldly  mother  has  some  maternal  soft- 
ness in  her  heart;  or  if  she  is  too  hardened  for 
that,  at  least  she  has  in  her  selfish  old  bosom 
maternal  pride.  If  she  does  not  really  care  for 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    181 

her  daughter,  she  will  at  least  watch  her  as  a 
gambler  watches  his  stake  on  the  green  table, 
and  she  keenly  appreciates  every  turn  of  the 
wheel.  Be  kind  to  your  sister  buds  from  gen- 
erosity, if  you  can,  —  I  am,  after  all,  your 
godmother,  and  am  bound  now  and  then  to 
put  in  something  moral !  —  but  if  you  cannot, 
at  least  be  kind  to  them  as  a  matter  of  policy. 
Don't  patronize,  don't  be  greedy,  don't  take  a 
man  away  from  a  girl  unless  you  are  really 
forced  to  it,  —  and  then  never,  never  attempt 
it  unless  you  are  sure,  and  three  times  sure,  of 
succeeding!  If  you  are  nice  to  the  daughters, 
you  will  find  little  difficulty  in  winning  the 
mothers. 

You  see  that  it  becomes  a  sort  of  point  of 
honor  with  any  decent  woman  to  help  the  girl 
that  is  good  to  her  daughter.  Women  have  n't 
as  a  rule  much  common  honesty,  perhaps; 
but  they  pretty  generally  have  an  unwritten 
code  in  things  of  a  certain  sort.  It's  a  feminine 
code,  as  my  husband  is  altogether  too  fond  of 
reminding  me;  but  I  tell  him  that  that  is  just 
what  makes  it  hold  so  fast  when  it  does  hold. 
If  a  woman  wants  a  man  herself,  she'll  take 


182  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

him  if  she  can  get  him;  for  surely  that's  right 
enough,  as  anybody  but  a  man  could  see. 
Outside  of  this,  however,  women  with  any 
antecedents  —  and  for  that  matter,  I  rather 
fancy  women  without  antecedents,  too  —  are 
instinctively  punctilious  about  paying  favors 
in  kind.  A  woman's  sense  of  honor  naturally 
has  n't,  as  a  rule,  much  to  do  with  anything 
but  the  morals  of  love;  there's  no  reason  that 
it  should  have ;  but  where  it  applies,  it  may  be 
counted  on  about  as  safely  as  any  other  earthly 
thing. 

I'm  speaking  chiefly  of  women  with  tra- 
ditions. There  are  plenty  of  piggesses  in  the 
world,  just  as  there  are  plenty  of  pigs.  We  are 
the  daughters  of  men,  and  therefore  cannot 
reasonably  be  expected  to  be  perfect.  The 
vulgar  woman  is  a  hundred  times  worse  in  so- 
ciety than  the  vulgar  man,  because  it  is  espe- 
cially the  function  of  women  to  keep  society 
going.  A  social  caddess  has  more  chance  to 
be  obnoxious  than  a  cad  has. 

You  see  my  chief  point  is  that  the  great 
thing  to  remember  is  tliat  real  social  success 
de})ends  upon  the  middle-aged  women.    You 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    183 

may  not  believe  it,  and  naturally  the  young 
matrons,  who  are  just  beginning  to  feel  their 
responsibilities  because  they  are  coming  to 
have  some  little  voice  in  managing  the  dan- 
cing-classes, would  tell  you  I  am  all  wrong. 
They  think  they  are  ruling,  just  because  they 
are  being  allowed  to  begin  to  learn  their  social 
duties.  I  am  trying  to  make  you  wise  by  let- 
ting you  into  the  real  secret.  These  young 
matrons,  headstrong  as  they  sometimes  are, 
self-complacent  as  they  are  almost  sure  to  be, 
take  their  leads  from  their  elders.  They  can't 
get  on  without  direction.  The  middle-aged 
are  really  managing. 

That  lace  I  sent  you  Christmas  is  fifteenth 
century  Venetian.  If  you  abuse  it,  I'll  never 
speak  to  you  again.  No  girl  of  your  age  knows 
how  to  take  care  of  lace,  and  you  'd  better  put 
it  away  for  ten  years. 

P.  S.  I  am  not  trying  to  pry  into  your 
affairs,  as  you  hint,  although  you  are  too  polite 
to  say  so.  I  have  never  asked  a  soul  about  you. 
Some  people  have  told  me  things  without  my 


184   A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

asking.  When  you  have  lived  longer  in  the 
world,  you  will  know  that  you  cannot  think 
without  its  being  known  to  somebody.  Indeed, 
very  often  people  know  what  a  girl  does  n't 
know  about  her  own  thoughts,  because  she 
won't  confess  them  to  herself. 


XXI 

LETTERS  OF  INTRODUCTION 

I  AM  very  sorry  to  deny  a  request  of  yours,  but 
about  letters  of  introduction  I  have  a  fixed 
rule,  which  I  never  under  any  circumstances 
break  over.  I  cannot  give  you  the  letter  for 
Mrs.  Elton  to  Lady  Graylawn  because  I  do 
not  personally  know  your  friend ;  and  I  never, 
never,  never  give  a  letter  to  any  human  being 
unless  the  bearer  is  really  an  acquaintance, 
and  a  tried  one  at  that.  I  hope  you  have  n't 
told  Mrs.  Elton  you  would  ask  me,  for  I  should 
hate  to  make  it  uncomfortable  for  you,  but  I 
cannot  go  against  my  principles.  You  may 
think  I  bristle  with  principles  as  a  porcupine 
bristles  with  quills,  but  I  am  too  old  to  change 
now;   especially  as  I  think  I  am  right. 

I  know  all  you  will  say,  or  rather  all  you  will 
think,  for  you  are  too  courteous  to  say  it,  even 
to  a  crotchety  old  godmother.  You  will  feel  as 
if  I  had  insulted  you  by  doubting  your  judg- 


186  THE   COUNSELS  OF 

ment  or  your  honesty;  you  will  be  angry  or 
hurt,  as  your  mood  happens  to  be,  and  wonder 
that  I  could  n't  do  so  small  a  thing  as  this  for 
you.  But,  my  dear  child,  is  it  a  small  thing? 
Is  the  principle  which  pricks  your  fingers  like 
the  quill  of  an  ill-natured  old  hedgehog  really 
of  so  little  consequence  ?  Have  a  little  patience 
with  an  old-fashioned  but  well-meaning  wo- 
man, and  hear  me  in  my  own  defense. 

A  letter  of  introduction  is  a  demand  upon 
•the  friendship  of  the  person  to  whom  it  is  sent. 
It  calls  on  that  person  to  extend  to  a  stranger 
certain  consideration  in  the  name  of  her 
friendship  for  you;  it  is  really  asking  a  favor 
on  the  ground  of  her  regard.  You  ask  in  the 
name  of  friendship,  and  I  hold  that  in  the 
spirit  of  friendship  you  are  on  your  honor 
bound  not  to  abuse  the  privilege.  You  are 
even  on  your  honor  bound  to  be  especially 
careful  not  to  run  any  possible  risk  of  mistake. 
I  go  so  far  that  I  do  not  personally  feel  it  right 
to  give  a  letter  unless  I  am  convinced  it  will 
result  in  pleasure  to  the  receiver  as  well  as  to 
the  bearer.  Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  ever 
have  to  suspect  myself  of  making  a  conven- 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    187 

ience  of  my  friends;  and  that  is  what  letters 
of  introduction  too  often  mean.  Certainly  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  it  is  my  plain  duty  to 
be  thoroughly  assured  that  the  acquaintance- 
ship I  am  the  means  of  bringing  about  will  not 
result  in  the  inconvenience  or  in  the  discom- 
fort of  one  I  call  my  friend. 

An  introduction  that  comes  to  me  from  any 
one  who  has  a  right  to  send  it,  I  regard  as  a 
claim  which  it  is  impossible  to  ignore  or  to 
slight.  To  refuse  to  honor  it  would  be  to  deny 
friendship  for  the  sender.  Indeed,  it  would 
be  worse  than  that:  it  would  be  a  deliberate 
insult,  because  it  would  be  equivalent  to 
declaring  that  the  one  who  has  given  the  note 
has  acted  dishonestly,  and  has  been  guilty  of 
trying  to  get  social  consideration  on  false  pre- 
tenses. There  are  cases  enough  where  this  is 
true;  but  if  the  letter  is  written  by  anybody 
whose  claim  I  recognize,  I  should  feel  that  I 
was  doing  a  mean  and  despicable  thing  if  I 
shirked  its  demand.  I  am  more  bound  to  do 
what  I  can  for  the  bearer  than  I  should  be 
for  my  friend  in  person,  for  I  am  put  on  my 
honor. 


188  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

Because  I  look  at  the  matter  in  this  way, 
I  naturally  assume  that  other  people  have  a 
right  to  take  the  same  ground;  and  I  never 
give  a  letter  except  in  cases  where  I  feel  en- 
tirely justified  in  demanding  all  that  is  implied 
by  the  strictest  construction  of  my  own  inter- 
pretation of  the  obligation.  In  the  first  place, 
the  person  to  whom  I  give  a  letter  must  be  a 
personal  friend;  in  the  second,  it  must  seem 
to  me,  as  I  just  said,  that  the  acquaintance  I 
propose  is  likely  to  be  agreeable  to  both  sides ; 
and  in  the  third,  I  must  be  confident  that  my 
own  friendship  and  standing  with  the  person 
addressed  fully  justify  my  taking  what  in  any 
one  not  a  real  friend  would  be  an  unwarrant- 
able liberty.  I  look  on  an  introduction  as  a 
debt  of  honor ;  I  should  feel  that  I  had  no 
choice  but  to  drop  the  acquaintance  of  any 
person  who  refused  freely  and  fully  to  respond 
to  a  letter  which  I  had  given,  and  I  never  mean 
to  put  myself  in  the  false  position  of  not  being 
justified  in  taking  this  view. 

I  am  not,  of  course,  speaking  of  such  intro- 
ductions as  have  to  do  with  business  of  any 
kind.   They  carry  their  own  explanation,  and 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER  189 

are  no  more  matters  of  social  import  than  any 
other  business  transaction.  Men,  I  suppose, 
have  to  give  and  receive  a  good  many  of  this 
sort,  and  now  that  women  are  so  mixed  up 
with  public  affairs,  the  same  is  more  or  less 
true  of  them.  It  is  naturally  not  in  my  way  to 
have  much  to  do  with  such  epistles,  but  if  by 
any  chance  I  am  called  upon  to  give  one,  I  try 
to  be  just  as  careful,  as  far  as  I  am  responsible. 
The  carelessness  and  the  recklessness  with 
which  many  people  give  letters  of  introduction 
seems  to  me  shocking.  Often,  I  suppose, 
sheer  cowardice  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  whole 
matter.  An  impudent  woman  or  a  young  man 
with  little  sensitiveness  demands  an  introduc- 
tion to  some  desirable  person  in  another  city  or 
abroad,  and  the  woman  who  is  asked  seldom 
has  courage  to  refuse,  no  matter  how  much 
she  wishes  to  get  out  of  it.  Mrs.  Percivale 
complained  to  me  bitterly  the  other  day  that 
Mrs.  Morrelle  had  got  from  her  letters  to  two 
or  three  of  her  best  friends  in  London;  and 
when  I  asked  why  she  gave  them,  she  could 
only  say  with  tears  in  her  eyes:  "Oh,  I  don't 
know!    I  just  didn't  have  the  backbone  to 


190  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

refuse;  and  the  people  Mrs.  Morrelle  insisted 
most  on  having  letters  to  are  the  very  ones  I 
hated  most  to  send  her  to.  Lady  Nairne  will 
never  forgive  me.  Oh,  I  do  wish  I  had  your 
independence  of  character!"  I  told  her  it 
was  n't  a  question  of  independence  of  charac- 
ter at  all  with  me,  but  of  moral  principle.  You 
can  see  easily  enough  that  the  persons  who, 
like  Mrs.  Morrelle,  are  least  deserving  of  such 
favors  are  sure  to  be  the  ones  most  brazen  in 
demanding  them;  and  I  think  it  is  a  moral 
duty  to  stand  out  against  them.  Somebody 
has  got  to  protect  society;  at  least  it  is  a  duty 
to  protect  one's  friends. 

More  than  once  I  have  had  confidential 
notes  telling  me  not  to  bother  about  people 
who  were  coming  to  me  with  letters ;  and  say- 
ing that  the  introductions  had  been  given 
under  compulsion,  but  really  meant  nothing. 
Think  how  unworthy  and  degrading  that  sort 
of  thing  is !  One  may  stop  payment  of  a  stolen 
check,  but  to  give  a  check  and  then  secretly 
to  make  it  worthless  seems  to  me  one  of  the 
meanest  forms  of  dishonesty.  I  am  hap|)y  to 
say  that  nobody  has  ever  taken  back  a  letter  in 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    191 

this  way  who  was  really  on  terms  of  friendship 
with  me  that  justified  the  making  of  the  claim 
on  me  in  the  first  place.  I  should  be  sorry  to 
have  a  friend  who  had  not  the  courage  to  be 
more  honest  than  that. 

One  naturally  sends  a  private  letter  when 
one  gives  an  introduction,  but  that  is  to  ex- 
plain, and  to  make  things  easier  for  both 
bearer  and  receiver  by  telling  who  and  what 
the  stranger  is.  To  get  an  introduction  with 
no  clue  to  the  identity  of  the  person  presenting 
it  is  so  perplexing  that  I  always  wish  to  spare 
my  friends  such  an  annoyance ;  but  openly  to 
give  a  card  and  then  secretly  to  discredit  it 
seems  to  me  absolutely  impossible  to  a  lady. 

The  English  are  rather  worse,  I  believe,  in 
the  matter  of  giving  introductions  than  we  are, 
though  I  fancy  they  are  less  free  with  their 
own  countrymen  than  they  are  with  us.  They 
do  give  letters  to  Americans  with  an  amazing 
freedom.  I  once  received  a  letter  introducing 
a  lady  and  her  daughter,  —  both  of  whom, 
moreover,  kindly  offered  to  come  into  the  coun- 
try and  stay  with  me  for  a  month  without 
being  asked,  —  and  the  writer  was  a  London 


192  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

woman,  who  had  to  remind  me  that  she  had 
seen  me  at  a  dinner,  and  to  add :  "Though  as  I 
was  so  unfortunate  as  not  to  speak  with  you, 
I  fear  you  may  not  remember  me  clearly." 
This  was  an  extreme  case,  but  Mrs.  Page  Bur- 
ton declared  with  every  appearance  of  seri- 
ousness that  a  man  once  presented  himself  at 
her  house  with  a  warm  note  from  an  English 
lady  who  "felt  she  knew  her"  because  her 
"trusted  maid"  had  once  lived  with  Mrs. 
Burton,  and  spoke  of  her  so  highly.  Mrs. 
Burton  said  she  was  so  flattered  to  be  well 
spoken  of  by  a  "trusted  maid"  that  she  imme- 
diately asked  the  bearer  of  the  note  to  dine. 
The  tale  does  not  sound  entirely  probable,  but 
sometimes  I  think  so  many  extraordinary 
things  are  true  in  social  life  that  I  shall  have 
to  adopt  as  my  motto  the  old  profession  of 
faith,  and  to  say  of  every  incredible  story:  "I 
believe  because  it  is  impossible." 

What  to  do  in  case  a  letter  of  introduction 
is  written  by  one  who  has  no  right  to  give  it 
is  one  of  the  hardest  of  social  problems.  In 
theory,  the  proper  thing  is  to  treat  it  like  a 
forged  check,  and  to  refuse  to  honor  it.   Prac- 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    193 

tically,  the  matter  is  n't  so  simple.  The  note 
may  be  presented  by  a  person  entirely  igno- 
rant of  the  fraudulent  nature  of  the  document, 
and  wholly  innocent  of  any  wrong  intention. 
Plenty  of  social  boasters  offer  letters  to  im- 
portant people  they  have  met  by  chance,  and 
hope  by  this  means  to  pass  as  friends  of  the 
notables  addressed.  For  the  receiver  to  snub 
the  unwary  who  take  such  introductions  is  of 
course  sometimes  necessary,  but  it  is  pretty 
hard  on  the  innocent,  if  foolish,  victims  of  the 
self -advertisers.  We  ordinary  mortals  are  sel- 
dom called  upon  to  be  very  harsh ;  and  in  fact 
I  have  n't  the  strength  of  mind  to  be.  Once 
or  twice  in  my  life  I  have  had  to  say  plainly 
that  I  did  not  know  the  writers  of  letters,  but 
generally  the  worst  that  comes  to  us  may  be 
got  over  by  a  little  tact.  A  little  evasion  — 
not  pleasant,  perhaps,  but  humane  —  is  suffi- 
cient. When  I  get  one  of  these  fraudulent  in- 
troductions, I  try  at  once  to  find  out  something 
about  the  bearer,  and  to  receive  her  or  drop 
her  on  her  own  merits.  You  can  generally  tell 
in  a  single  interview.  If  it  is  possible  to  hear 
from  the  person's  home,  the  matter  is  much 


194   A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

more  simple ;  but  I  refuse  to  stand  sponsor 
for  any  person  about  whom  I  am  not  well 
assured.  It  is  not  fair  to  the  people  who  have 
faith  in  me,  and  might  be  dragged  into  un- 
pleasant complications  through  my  ignorance. 
This  is  all  in  the  nature  of  an  apology  for 
refusing  what  you  asked  of  me;  and  if  it  does 
not  make  you  feel  that  I  am  right,  I  am  sure 
that  its  very  length  and  awful  solemnity  will 
prevent  you  from  doing  the  like  again.  Only 
don't  bear  malice,  my  dear,  whatever  you  do. 


XXII 

THE  HUSBANDRY  OF  FA^^IILY  TREES 

Certainly  I  know  whom  your  cousin  Horace 
married;  she  was  a  Miss  Julia  Wainwright, 
of  Wilmington.  Her  mother  was  a  Sprague; 
one  of  the  Fisher  Spragues.  A  sister  of  Julia 
married  Thatcher  Blake,  of  Boston.  They 
lived  for  a  long  time  on  Beacon  Street  oppo- 
site the  Common,  and  then  went  to  Florence. 
I  never  saw  Horace's  wife,  but  she  was  a 
beauty,  and  had  a  great  fortune.  They  had 
three  children,  and  the  oldest  daughter  is  the 
one  that  is  engaged  to  Count  de  Practique. 

There!  I  could  tell  you  a  lot  more  of  the 
same  sort,  but  this  is  all  you  will  have  patience 
to  read,  and  I  dare  say  it  is  more  than  you  will 
take  the  trouble  to  remember.  You  say  I  am 
a  walking  genealogical  gazetteer,  and  mean  it 
as  a  half-humorous  fling.  It  is  really  a  com- 
pliment, if  you  only  knew  it;  and  when  you 
go  on  to  add  that  nobody  in  your  generation 


196  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

pays  any  attention  to  genealogy,  you  are  cast- 
ing a  reproach  on  your  contemporaries. 

Nothing  could  be  more  stupid  than  a  per- 
son who  knows  nothing  but  genealogies.  Old 
Peter  Marengy,  for  instance,  drives  me  to  dis- 
traction by  the  way  in  which  he  starts  out  at 
the  mention  of  anybody's  name,  and  fairly 
drowns  you  in  a  flood  of  information  about  the 
person's  connections,  relatives,  grandmothers, 
cousins,  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  He  interrupts 
any  story  to  tell  who  the  grandmother  of  the 
hero  was,  or  whom  the  great-aunt  of  the  hero- 
ine married ;  and  is  more  tedious  than  tongue 
can  tell.  On  the  other  hand,  nobody  can  be 
said  to  be  up  to  the  requirements  of  good  so- 
ciety who  does  not  know  about  the  relation- 
ships of  the  people  in  her  own  set,  and  still 
more  the  connections  of  her  own  family.  Not 
to  know  about  one's  relatives  always  had  for 
me  a  little  flavor  of  the  not  entirely  reputable! 

Just  now  there  is  a  good  deal  of  a  fashion  of 
having  the  family  line  looked  up  by  profes- 
sional genealogists,  often  from  the  desire  of 
people  of  antecedents  not  socially  of  the  best 
to  establish  a  family  tree  up  which  they  may 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    197 

climb  into  some  one  of  the  orders  of  the  day, 
—  Dames,  or  Daughters,  or  Granddaughters, 
or  that  sort  of  thing,  of  which  I  have  already 
given  you  my  opinion.  This  is  well  enough, 
although  it  has  given  the  whole  business  a 
rather  cheap  air;  but  in  any  case,  this  is  not 
what  I  should  mean  when  I  say  a  society 
woman  must  know  about  genealogies.  These 
people  seldom  know  anything  about  their 
ancestors  after  they  have  been  provided  with 
the  record.  They  keep  it  as  a  book,  and  treat 
it  somewhat  in  the  spirit  of  the  man  who  had 
a  prayer  printed,  and  every  night  on  going  to 
bed  waved  his  arm  toward  it,  and  remarked: 
"Those  are  my  sentiments.  Lord."  They 
refer  to  the  printed  account  as  establishing, 
by  the  very  fact  that  it  is  printed,  their  claim 
to  be  considered  of  proper  lineage.  In  many 
cases  there  is  nothing  in  particular  to  be  said 
for  their  forbears  except  that  they  were  decent 
and  commonplace  mortals;  but  as  only  the 
shallowest  vanity  is  generally  concerned  in 
getting  up  the  genealogy  at  all,  a  mere  list  of 
names  does  as  well  as  anything  else. 

I  like  to  have  a  person  interested  in  ances- 


198  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

tors  because  they  were  hers  or  his;  because 
what  our  hfe  is,  is  so  tied  up  with  what  they 
were.  If  one  is  not  interested,  I  have  no  quar- 
rel with  her;  only  such  an  interest  appeals  to 
me.  The  thing  that  concerns  us  socially,  how- 
ever, is  another  matter  altogether.  A  family 
genealogy  is  a  personal  interest,  and  at  best  a 
thing  of  personal  pride.  I  think  that  in  the 
give  and  take  of  social  life  we  should  make 
some  effort  to  know  about  other  people.  On 
the  face  of  it,  this  spares  us  no  end  of  danger- 
ous slips.  Sometimes  it  seems  to  me  that  a 
telepathic  influence  moves  us  to  say  to  people 
precisely  those  things  which  should  be  left 
rigorously  unsaid,  and  if  we  know  of  no  defi- 
nite reason  for  keeping  quiet,  out  they  come. 
John  Colburt  took  Mrs.  Amy  Houghton  in  to 
dinner  once,  and  just  because  he  did  not  know 
that  she  was  the  granddaughter  of  Professor 
Canton,  who  murdered  Dr.  Winchester,  began 
out  of  a  clear  sky  to  talk  to  her  about  "the 
famous  Canton-Winchester  murder."  An- 
other time  at  dinner  I  overheard  a  man  ask  a 
lady  if  she  had  ever  seen  so  and  so,  the  great 
embezzler  who  shot  himself,  and  heard  her 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    199 

answer:  "He  was  my  father,  sir."  I  told  you 
a  lot  of  these  stories  in  one  of  my  letters^^  and  I 
could  add  others.  Any  man  or  woman  who 
goes  into  decent  society  is  as  inexcusable  for 
making  such  cruel  blunders  as  he  would  be 
for  wiping  his  boots  on  a  lady's  frock.  Women 
are  not  so  often  caught  in  such  a  trap  as  men ; 
though  when  they  do  make  a  blunder,  it  is 
sure  to  be  quite  as  bad.  A  general  knowledge 
of  family  relations  is  needed  at  every  dinner  or 
other  function.  The  well-bred  person  natu- 
rally avoids  doubtful  topics  unless  completely 
sure  of  the  ground;  but  when  a  stupid  mem- 
ber of  the  company  blunders  into  a  mess,  one 
should  know  how  to  help  to  make  matters 
right,  or  at  least  to  keep  out  of  the  awkward- 
ness one's  self. 

There  are  a  thousand  ways  in  which  it  is 
convenient  to  know  what  are  the  antecedents 
and  relations  of  the  persons  one  associates 
with.  In  Boston  to-day  it  is  safe  to  assume 
that  everybody  is  related  to  everybody  else, 
just  as  in  New  York  it  is  fairly  near  to  the 
truth  to  take  it  for  granted  that  in  any  com- 
pany will  be  prominent  people  who  are  inter- 


200  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

ested  in  their  genealogy  only  to  the  extent  of 
wishino;  to  conceal  it.  In  either  case  the  as- 
sumption  does  fairly  well,  and  either  proposi- 
tion, taken  as  a  general  truth,  tells  you  what 
to  avoid.  Sooner  or  later,  however,  an  occasion 
is  sure  to  arise  when  no  general  proposition, 
but  only  specific  knowledge,  will  avail;  and 
to  be  prepared  for  that  chance  I  make  it  my 
business  to  have  a  fair  knowledge  of  family 
relations. 

In  regard  to  one's  own  family,  if  your  ances- 
tors have  been  respectable  folk,  it  is  certainly 
well  to  know  it.  Silly  and  shoddy  people 
make,  and  always  will  make,  absurd  preten- 
sions, and  fictitious  pedigrees  will  be  manu- 
factured to  the  end  of  time;  but  I  believe  in  a 
wholesome  pride  of  race.  Do  you  suppose  it 
has  done  me  anything  but  good  to  know  that 
my  grandfather  was  called  on  the  bench 
"Incorruptible  Tom,"  or  that  my  great-uncle 
—  he  was  the  elder  brother  of  great-aunt 
Tabitha,  peace  to  her  ashes!  —  stood  up  like 
a  man  and  was  shot  in  cold  blood,  rather  than 
betray  a  trust  ?  I  am  even  sure  that  I  am  none 
the  worse  for  being  aware  that  my  mother 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   201 

opened  a  ball  with  the  Grand  Duke  Axel,  and 
that  Talleyrand  pronounced  my  great-grand- 
mother the  most  beautiful  and  accomplished 
woman  he  met  in  America.  To  know  that  one 
is  descended  from  right-minded,  honorable 
people  is  surely  a  strong  incentive  to  be  as 
decent  as  one  is  capable  of  being;  and  I  con- 
fess that,  personally,  I  find  the  reputation  of 
my  mother  and  my  grandmothers  for  breed- 
ing and  womanliness  and  accomplishments  a 
vigorous  tonic  whenever  I  am  tempted  to  give 
up  effort  to  keep  as  nearly  as  possible  to  their 
standard. 

There  is  a  good  deal  more  to  the  matter, 
too,  if  I  were  only  clever  enough  to  express  it. 
I  have  a  deal  of  faith  in  the  moral  effect  of 
proper  family  pride  and  respect  for  blood  on 
the  community  as  well  as  on  individuals.  It 
is  easy  enough  to  find  degenerates  who  come 
of  good  people  and  who  disgrace  every  tie; 
but  on  the  whole,  I  am  sure  a  sense  of  dig- 
nity helps  a  person  to  behave  well.  To  be  re- 
sponsible to  anything  is  a  moral  restraint,  and 
a  sense  of  coming  of  fine  or  even  of  merely 
highly  placed  ancestors  must  help  one  to  keep 


202  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

out  of  the  worst  sorts  of  evil  ways.  Professor 
Wodteling  told  me  once  that  the  most  moral 
races  are  those  who  practice  ancestor- worship; 
and  while  I  don't  know  whether  he  was  right 
or  not,  I  can  see  why  he  might  be.  If  he  is,  it 
seems  to  me  that  to  pay  a  proper  attention  and 
respect  to  genealogy  is  indirectly  a  help  to  pub- 
lic morals.  It  is  supporting  the  traditions  which 
on  the  whole  make  for  general  morality. 

It  should  not  be  necessary  for  me  to  explain 
that  I  do  not  mean  the  sort  of  ancestor-glorifi- 
cation which  consists  in  flaunting  a  pedigree 
in  the  face  of  the  world  just  out  of  vanity. 
The  person  who  claims  consideration  on  the 
strength  of  being  well-descended  is  really  set- 
ting up  a  claim  to  superiority  which  he  or  she 
should  be  forced  to  make  good;  is  really  ask- 
ing to  be  judged  by  a  standard  higher  than 
that  applied  to  common  mortals.  If  he  has 
nothing  in  himself  to  entitle  him  to  especial 
respect,  he  is  thereby  proved  to  be  not  above, 
but  below,  his  neighbors.  Family  tradition 
that  ministers  only  to  pride  and  vainglory  is 
about  the  most  contemptible  sort  of  caddish- 
ness  I  know. 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   203 

This  is  tremendously  didactic,  and  solemn 
enough  to  have  been  written  by  great-aunt 
Tabitha  herself.  I  am  really  serious,  however, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  I  seem  to  be  trying 
to  make  a  Lenten  sermon.  My  forbears  are 
very  real  and  human  to  me,  and  I  have  always 
had  a  most  friendly  interest  in  them. 

It  is  a  pity  our  knowledge  of  our  ancestors 
cannot  include  more  particulars  of  their  little 
peculiarities  and  human  weaknesses.  Our 
sense  of  humor  would  then  be  called  to  subdue 
our  vanity,  and  help  to  keep  us  in  a  rational 
frame  of  mind.  We  know  of  the  good  deeds  of 
those  old  men  and  women,  —  that  is,  if  we 
know  anything  in  particular.  If  one  has  been 
too  notorious  a  rascal,  we  may  hear  of  that; 
but  in  general,  the  ancestors  are  shadowy 
abstractions.  What  I  wish  we  knew  is  the  sort 
of  story  that  in  our  family  used  to  be  told  of  a 
cousin  who  died  before  I  was  born.  He  was 
a  bachelor,  and  father  once  remarked  that 
Hollis  could  never  marry  because  he  could 
never  think  a  woman  good  enough  to  be 
honored  with  his  preference.  He  was  very 
vain,  and  sported  an  enormous  pair  of  those 


204  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

horrid  long  side-whiskers,  "weepers,"  that  are 
absohitely  the  most  detestable  form  in  which 
a  man  is  able  to  disfigure  his  face  with  hair. 
Great  aunt  Tabby,  who  dealt  fairly  with  all 
the  family  by  making  herself  disagreeable  to 
everybody,  never  lost  a  chance  to  tell  cousin 
Hollis  that  his  whiskers  were  hideous;  and 
she  always  wound  up  her  unflattering  remarks 
by  saying:  "Think  how  those  whiskers  will 
look  in  your  coffin,  when  they're  all  slumped 
down!"  She  repeated  this  so  often,  and  ap- 
parently with  such  grewsome  unction,  that 
persecuted  and  inordinately  vain  cousin  Hollis 
was  driven  to  despair  by  the  image  of  his 
dead  face  which  her  words  conjured  up.  He 
went  to  the  length  of  putting  in  his  will  explicit 
directions  that  nobody  should  be  permitted 
to  see  him  in  his  coffin;  and  I  suppose  died 
with  a  mind  relieved  of  the  horrid  fear  aunt 
Tabby  had  held  over  him.  The  irony  of  it, 
or  the  joke  of  it,  was,  —  if  it  is  ])ro])er  to  speak 
of  anything  connected  with  such  a  subject  as 
a  joke, — that  his  will  wasn't  even  read  until 
after  the  funeral,  and  all  the  relatives  had 
viewed  the  remains,  according  to  the  cheerful 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   205 

fashion  of  those  days.  And  it  is  recorded  that 
aunt  Tabby,  when  she  looked  down  upon  the 
dead,  set  her  hps  together,  and  nodded  her 
head,  as  much  as  to  say:  "Yes;  just  as  I  said." 

I  should  like  to  know  all  sorts  of  human 
anecdotes  about  my  forbears,  of  the  same  in- 
timate kind,  so  that  I  could  make  them  seem 
as  human  and  as  flesh-and-bloodsy  as  possi- 
ble. Then,  when  I  thought  of  their  nobility 
of  mind  and  purpose,  I  could  not  but  feel  as 
if  what  they  did  I  might  do.  They  would  be 
closer  to  me  than  any  person  can  be  who  has 
gone  so  far  down  the  "corridor  of  time"  that 
all  we  can  see  is  the  shape  of  a  figure,  with  per- 
haps a  gleam  of  a  halo  by  way  of  distinction. 

It  is  sometimes  of  a  good  deal  of  value,  in 
coming  to  a  conclusion  about  the  character  of 
a  man,  to  know  about  his  people.  Before  you 
are  too  entirely  carried  off  your  feet  about  any 
man  to  reason  clearly,  you  will  do  well  to  find 
out,  if  you  can,  what  his  family  is  like.  A 
family  must  have  its  characteristics.  There 
are  always  traits  that  are  practically  sure  to 
come  out  in  every  member  of  a  clan,  faintly  in 
some,  and  well  marked  in  others,  but  sure  to 


206   A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

be  there.  Every  family  has  its  character  as 
truly  as  every  individual;  and  while  it  would 
be  foolish  to  judge  a  person  entirely  by  his 
people,  or  indeed  chiefly  by  them,  it  is  more 
foolish  to  attempt  to  estimate  him  fully  and 
fairly  without  taking  his  race  into  account.  If 
you  should  ever  think  of  marrying  a  man,  do 
try  to  hold  yourself  in  hand  until  you  have 
made  him  talk  about  his  family,  and  until  you 
have  heard  others,  who  really  know,  discuss 
it  too.  This  last  is  not  always  possible;  but 
the  first  is,  and  should  never  be  neglected.  If 
you  are  even  considering  the  possibility  of 
merging  yourself  in  a  clan,  you  should  know 
what  that  clan  is;  and  you  cannot  in  any 
other  way  judge  of  a  certain  side  of  the  man 
himself. 

I  hope  it  will  not  shock  you  if  I  add  that 
every  woman  is  morally  bound  to  consider 
what  sort  of  an  ancestry  she  is  providing  for 
her  possible  children. 


XXIII 

A  DISCOURSE  ON   SNOBBERY 

What  is  a  snob  ?  It  is  a  domestic  animal,  my 
dear,  in  the  same  sense  that  a  cockroach  is ;  and 
it  is  one  that  equally  well  deserves  extermina- 
tion. A  snob  is  a  pest  to  society,  and  should 
be  regarded  as  a  natural  enemy  by  everybody 
who  has  the  good  of  mankind  at  heart. 

This  does  n't  define,  I  know,  and  very  likely 
you  think  it  is  n't  over  elegant;  but  I  do  hate 
snobbishness  so  much  that  I  have  to  relieve 
my  mind  a  little  before  I  can  begin  to  speak 
seriously.  Snobbery  takes  so  many  forms 
that  to  try  to  express  it  exactly  is  like  the  at- 
tempt to  define  a  snake.  A  little  friend  of  mine 
described  a  snake  as  a  "long  wriggle  that  is 
always  horrid;"  and  when  she  was  further 
pressed,  added  that  you  could  *' know  it  by  it's 
always  being  snaky."  A  snob  is  always  de- 
testable; but  above  all  else,  a  snob  is  always 
snobbish. 


208  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

When  no  less  a  man  than  Thackeray  took  a 
whole  book  to  set  down  the  snobs,  you  will  not 
expect  me  to  get  them  all  into  a  single  letter;  but 
then,  before  he  got  through,  he  had  included 
about  all  the  men  that  walk  the  earth.  David 
said  in  his  haste  that  all  men  were  liars,  and 
Thackeray  at  his  leisure  proved  that  all  men 
are  snobs;  so  that  the  poor  creatures  haven't 
a  shred  of  character  left,  and  I  am  glad  I  am 
not  a  man!  I  have  some  compassion  on  the 
poor  things,  however,  and  think  they  might  be 
let  off  a  little  more  easily.  Some  of  the  things 
Thackeray  sets  down  as  snobbish,  it  seems  to 
me,  might  be  called  by  a  name  less  harsh. 

It  may  not  be  manly  for  a  man  to  be 
ashamed  that  his  father  was  a  coal-heaver 
and  his  mother  a  washwoman;  but  I  can 
sympathize  with  him  enough  to  feel  that  if  he 
makes  no  pretenses  that  are  false,  and  only 
keeps  his  own  counsel,  he  is  not  to  be  blamed. 
If  he  is  not  kind  to  them,  if  he  deserts  and 
denies  them,  there  is  no  possibility  of  excuse; 
but  while  that  is  selfish  and  vain,  it  is  not  what 
I  call  downright  snobbery.  A  man  who  is  un- 
kind to  his  people  I  call  a  cad.    He  is  likely 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   209 

to  be  a  snob  too,  but  this  especial  form  of 
meanness  is  caddishness. 

Snobbishness  as  I  understand  it,  and  as  I 
most  hate  it,  is  a  desire  to  shine  at  the  expense 
of  somebody  else.  I  can  overlook,  with  a  good 
nature  that  has,  I  confess,  some  contempt  in 
it,  the  person  who  is  ashamed  of  the  truth 
about  his  origin,  or  anything  else  not  as  he 
would  have  it,  which  is  yet  beyond  his  control ; 
what  I  cannot  tolerate  is  the  attempt  to  make 
others  discontented  and  envious.  To  parade 
one's  wealth  or  one's  family  is  vulgar  and  self- 
ish enough;  but  it  is  made  really  vicious  by 
the  desire  to  humiliate  those  who  are  less  for- 
tunate. The  woman  who  wears  diamonds  in 
the  street-car  —  and  there  are  such  in  Amer- 
ica—  is  sufficiently  vulgar;  but  she  may  be 
simply  silly  from  vanity  and  ignorance  of  the 
fitness  of  things.  She  may  be  entirely  free 
from  the  idea  of  making  anybody  unhappy. 
To  the  pleasure  of  the  genuine  snob  it  is  essen- 
tial that  somebody  be  hurt  and  humiliated. 
Vanity  that  makes  a  ridiculous  exhibition  of 
itself  is  simply  underbred;  but  snobbery  is 
necessarily  cruel. 


210  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

A  Mr.  Tripper  instructed  you  at  a  dinner, 
you  tell  me,  that  anybody  who  takes  pride  in 
ancestry  is  a  snob.  Obviously  he  is  not  })roud 
of  his,  poor  man;  but  he  is  foolish  to  show  it 
by  railing  at  those  who  did  have  grandfathers. 
Why  is  it  more  snobbish  to  be  pleased  that 
I  came  of  decent  and  refined  people  than  it  is 
to  rejoice  that  my  grandfather's  father  knew 
enough  at  the  time  of  the  French  Revolution 
to  take  advantage  of  the  breaking  up  of  gal- 
leries, and  to  buy  good  pictures  ?  I  am  grate- 
ful that  I  inherit  the  pictures,  and  equally  I 
am  glad  that  I  inherit  good  traditions  and  an 
honored  name.  As  I  said  the  other  day,  pride 
in  family  seems  to  me  admirable,  as  long  as  it 
is  a  private  incentive  to  living  up  to  tradition, 
though  it  is  bad  the  moment  it  is  used  to  make 
other  people  uncomfortable. 

The  pith  of  the  whole  business  is  that 
unkindness  of  snobbishness.  I  think  it  is 
not  unfair  to  define  a  real  snob  as  a  person 
wdio  through  vanity  tries  to  humiliate  another. 
Whether  this  is  done  through  the  parading  of 
real  or  of  imaginary  claims  to  consideration 
does  n't  seem  to  me  to  make  much  difl^erence. 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   211 

The  degrees  are  infinite,  and  perhaps  Thack- 
eray was  right  in  assuming  that  most  of  us 
have  some  incHnation  in  this  direction.  The 
degree  of  individual  blame  is  not  for  me  to 
settle. 

Self-assertion  is  often  spoken  of  as  if  it  were 
necessarily  snobbish;  but  I  have  noticed  that 
the  self-assertion  of  persons  sufficiently  high 
does  not  get  that  name.  Nobody  thinks  of 
calling  it  snobbish  for  a  queen  to  insist  that 
those  around  her  stand  while  she  sits;  for  a 
duchess  to  insist  upon  the  proper  precedence 
at  dinner;  or  for  a  military  officer  to  demand 
the  formal  salutes.  These  things  are  all  a 
legitimate  part  of  the  system.  They  must  be 
attended  to,  or  the  whole  form  of  royal  and 
military  life  collapses.  I  hold  that  the  same  is 
true  of  social  life,  and  that  we  all  of  us  have  to 
do  our  part  to  keep  up  form  and  outward  ob- 
servances. No  lady  would  invite  to  her  house 
a  second  time  a  man  who  walked  through  a 
door  ahead  of  her  when  he  should  have  let 
her  pass,  and  in  dropping  him  from  her  lists 
she  is  asserting,  and  righteously  asserting,  her 
prerogatives. 


212  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

The  question  how  far  one  is  to  go  in  this 
self-assertion  is  one  of  the  hardest  of  all  social 
questions.  Mrs.  Fifield  Amory  said  to  me  the 
other  day:  *'I  feel  so  like  a  cad!  I've  been 
arranging  to  get  Katherine  into  the  right  dan- 
cing-class, and  it  was  so  like  pulling  wires  that 
it  was  perfectly  detestable ! "  I  told  her  I  knew 
how  uncomfortable  that  sort  of  work  is,  and 
that  I  thought  things  should  be  so  the  right 
girls  would  go  into  a  class  as  a  matter  of 
course;  but  that  the  push  of  people  made  this 
impossible.  People  who  do  not  belong  there 
are  so  straining  every  nerve  to  get  in  that 
those  who  have  the  right  have  at  least  to  assert 
themselves.  "Well,"  she  said,  "I'd  never  do 
it  for  myself,  but  Katherine  ought  to  go  with 
her  friends,  and  with  her  own  cousins.  I  hope 
I'm  not  a  snob,  but  I  do  feel  like  one." 

She  is  a  perfectly  ladylike  woman,  and  not 
in  the  least  pushing.  She  naturally  wishes  her 
daughter  to  be  with  her  social  equals;  and 
the  only  reason  why  she  had  to  do  anything 
is  that  so  many  mothers  push  their  daughters 
for  the  best  classes  that  the  matrons  are  over- 
whelmed, and  the  mother  who  does  n't  look 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   213 

after  her  own  chick  finds  the  girl  left  out. 
This  does  not  seem  to  me  to  be  in  the  least 
snobbery.  It  is  one  of  the  unpleasant  neces- 
sities which  result  from  the  fact  that  we  have 
no  recognized  grades  in  society.  It  certainly 
is  n't  snobbish  for  me  to  expect  my  cook  to 
stand  while  I  give  her  orders.  Social  distinc- 
tions are  as  absolute  and  as  tangible  as  the 
rising  of  the  sun ;  and  to  ignore  them  is  about 
as  silly.  Sometimes  there  is  more  snobbery 
in  ostentatious  ignoring  of  social  distinctions 
than  in  the  most  rigid  observance  of  them. 
When  Mrs.  Granite,  who  poses  as  a  reformer 
and  a  philanthropist,  insists  upon  introducing 
guests  to  her  parlor-maid,  and  tells  them  to 
shake  hands,  she  is  doing  the  "holier-than- 
thou"  to  perfection;  and  she  certainly  suc- 
ceeds in  making  both  guest  and  maid  suffi- 
ciently uncomfortable. 

No,  my  dear  child,  let  Mr.  Tripper,  whom 
you  say  you  hope  never  to  see  again,  hold 
whatever  views  he  pleases  about  ancestors, 
and  Jet  anybody  you  like  tell  you  that  it  is 
caddish  to  insist  upon  social  privileges;  but 
do  you  continue  to  regard  and  respect  your 


214   A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

forbears,  keep  your  place  in  society,  and,  when 
the  unpleasant  duty  comes  to  you,  insist  upon 
your  social  rights.  Do  your  duty  in  that  station 
to  which  it  has  pleased  God  to  call  you.  Until 
the  day  when  you  find  yourself  vaunting  your 
superiority  for  the  sake  of  triumphing  over 
somebody  else,  you  need  not  be  troubled  lest 
you  are  becoming  snobbish!  The  moment, 
however,  that  you  find  yourself  taking  plea- 
sure in  the  jealousy  you  awaken  in  another  by 
parading  your  advantages;  the  moment  you 
detect  yourself  vaunting  or  flaunting  for  the 
sake  of  making  others  uncomfortable ;  the 
moment  you  see  yourself  pressing  forward  so 
that  others  may  feel  humiliated  by  being  left 
behind  ;  that  moment  get  to  your  closet  as 
fast  as  your  legs  will  carry  you :  go  down  hard 
on  your  marrowbones,  and  pray  God  to  be 
merciful  to  you  —  a  Snob  ! 


XXIV 

THE  MISFORTUNE  OF  FOREIGN   MATCHES 

So  the  Earl  of  Cruffud  —  did  he  learn  to  spell 
his  name  in  Wales,  I  wonder  ?  —  danced  the 
cotillion  with  you  at  the  great  and  glorious 
Biltastor  ball !  Can  he  dance  ?  If  so,  he  is  a 
miracle  among  Englishmen.  I  hope  at  least  he 
knew  enough  to  keep  off  your  feet  and  your 
frock.  I  saw  Minnie  Clapham,  not  long  ago, 
with  an  English  partner  so  completely  wound 
up  in  her  train  that  I  did  n't  see  how  the  pair 
were  to  be  separated  unless  they  were  cut 
apart.  As  to  reversing,  I  was  staying  at 
Glamore  Castle  once  when  the  girls  took  an 
hour  every  morning,  while  the  men  were  out 
shooting,  and  practiced  whirling  around  so  as 
to  be  able  to  waltz  without  getting  giddy.  The 
men  —  or  the  girls,  for  that  matter  —  can't 
reverse,  and  they  had  to  learn  the  whirling 
dervish  trick  or  come  to  grief. 

It  is  funny  foreigners  are  so  little  able  to  take 


216  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

up  a  thing  like  that,  a  thing  that  to  an  Ameri- 
can comes  as  easy  as  breathing.  In  Paris  I 
went  to  a  ball  once  at  an  exclusive  house,  where 
the  entrance  was  supj^osed  to  be  in  itself  a 
sort  of  a  patent  to  nobility,  and  there  I  was  told 
that  the  dancing  was  to  be  a  VAmericaine. 
That  meant  that  they  reversed.  The  way  the 
men  snapped  one  about  was  something  awful ! 
First  you  were  for  three  steps  jerked  to  the 
right,  and  then  for  three  steps  you  were  jerked 
to  the  left ;  but  as  for  reversing,  that  was  a 
thing  beyond  their  wildest  imagining!  If  you 
carry  out  your  threat,  and  marry  a  foreigner, 
you  will  give  up  dancing.  That  I  am  sure  of. 
You  will  find,  moreover,  that  the  parties  are 
dull  beyond  words.  At  the  French  ball,  all 
the  supper  we  had  was  trays  of  glasses  full 
of  colored  things  to  drink.  I  have  no  idea 
what  they  were;  some  sort  of  fruit  syrups,  I 
suppose,  but  all  utterly  detestable. 

You  want  to  know  how  the  idea  of  your 
marrying  a  title  strikes  me,  do  you  ?  I  should 
say  it  would  be  more  agreeable  to  marry  a 
man;  but  every  one  to  her  taste.  You  say 
Lord  Colcester  is  so  delightful,  but  I  lia})pen 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   217 

to  know  that  you  know  he  is  engaged  to  his 
cousin.  As  to  the  Earl  of  Bareboard,  you  can- 
not frighten  me  with  him ;  you  have  n't  money 
enough  to  buy  that  specimen  of  the  British 
aristocracy.  All  means  of  catering  to  the  vices 
come  high,  and  foreign  titles  that  are  worth 
anything  are  among  the  most  expensive  of 
vicious  luxuries.  The  Earl  of  Bareboard  will 
sell  his  name  and  title  to  the  daughter  of  some 
pork-packer  or  patent-medicine  vender,  on 
whom  the  diamonds  are  as  thick  as  the  drops 
of  sweat  on  the  face  of  her  father.  She  is  wel- 
come to  him,  and  he  to  her.  America  has  lost 
a  few  charming  women  to  foreign  noblemen, 
but  on  the  whole,  we  have  reason  to  be  thank- 
ful to  the  nobility  for  taking  away  the  women 
they  have  selected.  In  general  terms,  any 
country  is  better  off  without  a  girl  who  will 
sell  herself  for  rank,  and  if  we  are  to  preserve 
any  decent  remnants  of  democracy,  this  is 
especially  true  of  us.  I  have  known  at  least 
half  the  American  girls  who  in  the  last  twenty 
years  have  made  grand  marriages  abroad, 
and  I  certainly  feel  that  society  here  is  well 
able  to  bear  the  loss  of  most  of  them. 


218  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

As  for  Waldron  Leigh,  that  is  another  mat- 
ter, and  puts  foreign  marriage  on  a  different 
basis.  He  came  over  to  marry  money,  and 
he  might  take  you,  if  he  could  not  find  a  real 
heiress.  He  would  suppose  you  were  going 
to  inherit  a  great  deal  more  money  than  you 
will  ever  see,  and  he  knows  he  cannot  get  an 
heiress  in  England.  He  is  the  seventeenth  son 
or  so  of  a  family  that  is  respectable  enough; 
the  sort  of  people  that  in  America  you  might 
have  a  bowing  acquaintance  with,  and  per- 
haps leave  cards  on  once  a  year.  He  is  hand- 
some in  that  way  which  is  two  thirds  brute 
force,  and  that  appeals  to  a  woman  simply  as 
a  matter  of  animal  strength;  he  is  convinced 
that  he  is  irresistible,  and  that  always  has 
an  effect  with  us  women;  and  I  dare  say  you 
might  marry  him,  if  you  really  try.  I  did  n't 
mean  to  say  anything  against  him,  for  I  don't 
wish  to  spur  you  up  to  take  his  part;  but  I  am 
confident,  from  the  tone  of  voice  in  which  he 
mentioned  you  when  he  was  on  here,  that  he 
is  convinced  he  can  have  you  if  he  conde- 
scends to  say  tlie  word.  Oh,  my  dear,  just  to 
please  me,  lead  him  on  to  })ro})ose,  and  then 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   219 

give  him  the  snubbing  of  his  Hf e !  You  've  been 
told  a  hundred  times  that  no  nice  girl  lets  a 
man  propose  unless  she  means  to  accept  him; 
but  in  the  first  place  that  is  nonsense,  and  in 
the  second,  if  it  were  true,  it  does  n't  apply  to 
a  colossally  conceited  Englishman! 

I  went  in  to  dinner  with  Waldron  Leigh  at 
Naliant  last  summer,  and  he  was  so  sure  he 
had  made  a  conquest  of  me  that  I  could  have 
killed  him  on  the  spot!  I  had  to  snub  him,  but 
I  am  very  much  afraid  he  did  n't  know  it.  He 
thinks  he  is  Adonis  and  Apollo  rolled  into 
one;  and  he  is  duller  than  death! 

Seriously,  to  come  to  the  question  in  the 
abstract,  you  know  that  I  am  firm  set  against 
foreign  marriages.  They  may  be,  and  they 
have  been,  successful.  I  have  seen  those  that 
were  said  to  be  satisfactory,  although  I  con- 
fess I  have  seldom  been  able  to  see  that  they 
were  much  to  boast  of.  I  had  the  audacity 
to  say  to  Mrs.  Frennle,  when  she  was  boast- 
ing of  the  happiness  of  Kate's  married  life,  — 
Kate  married  a  Thurnwell  of  somewhere  down 
in  Devonshire;  the  family  goes  back  to  the 
Flood,  or  the  Garden  of  Eden,  or  something,  as 


220  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

Mrs.  Frennle  is  continually  telling  her  friends, 
—  I  said  what  was  the  truth,  that  the  things 
she  dwelt  on  as  evidences  of  the  success  of  the 
match  were  matters  that  would  have  been 
taken  for  granted  in  an  American  marriage. 
I  told  her  she  would  have  been  anything  but 
satisfied  if  anybody  had  congratulated  her  on 
Lucy's  match  —  Lucy  married  in  Philadel- 
phia—  on  the  ground  that  her  husband  had 
so  many  horses,  did  n't  drink,  and  was  fairly 
good-tempered. 

International  marriages,  however,  may  turn 
out  well,  just  as  any  other  unlikely  thing  may 
happen  in  this  surprising  world.  They  gener- 
ally succeed  best  when  the  girl  is  content  to  be 
a  mere  zero.  Foreign  women  are  bred  up  to  be 
thoroughly  subordinate  to  their  husbands,  and 
they  accept  it  much  as  they  do  the  fact  that 
they  will  starve  if  they  do  not  eat.  It  is  dif- 
ferent with  us.  We  are  willing  —  if  we  are  old- 
fashioned  enough  to  be  in  love  with  our  hus- 
bands —  to  give  up  to  the  wishes  and  to  the 
will  of  the  man  we  marry,  but  he  must  accept 
it  as  a  gift,  and  not  as  a  right.  The  foreign 
husband  seldom  has  any  conception  of  a  wife. 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   221 

—  of  any  wife,  —  except  as  an  inferior  and 
silent  partner  in  the  matrimonial  firm;  and  as 
a  rule  she  is  frankly,  and  indeed  unconsciously, 
treated  as  such.  Plenty  of  American  husbands 
perhaps  hold  much  the  same  view  as  far  as  the 
main  idea  is  concerned;  but  they  do  not,  as 
the  Englishman  does,  expect  the  wife  to  share 
it.  The  prejudices  of  American  society  force 
any  man  who  is  not  an  out-and-out  black- 
guard to  conceal  any  feeling  that  his  wife  is  a 
mere  chattel. 

If  worst  does  come  to  worst  here,  the  wife 
has  at  least  the  support  of  knowing  that  she 
has  the  sympathy  of  her  social  world  against  a 
man  who  has  assumed  to  own  her  as  he  does  a 
horse  or  a  dog.  It  may  be  a  poor  and  intangi- 
ble comfort;  but  I  am  convinced  that  many 
a  miserable  woman,  who  would  die  in  slow 
tortures  rather  than  appeal  to  the  pity  of  her 
acquaintances,  has  yet  been  sustained  by  the 
consciousness  that  she  has  it. 

The  difference  is  really  great  abroad.  An 
American  tied  to  an  autocratic  husband  there 
finds  herself  in  an  atmosphere  frightfully  cold 
and  uncongenial.    I  had  a  dreadful  half  hour 


222  THE    COUNSELS   OF 

in  Florence  once,  when  a  New  York  girl  who 
had  married  an  Englishman  broke  down  one 
night  in  the  parlor  of  the  hotel,  and  forced 
her  confidence  on  me,  though  1  was  almost  a 
stranger.  She  did  know  my  people,  and  I  sup- 
pose the  poor  thing  was  worn  out.  She  said 
her  husband  meant  to  be  kind;  that  he  was 
kind  in  his  way;  that  her  English  friends 
thought  him  a  model;  but  she  wailingly  said 
she  felt  as  if  she  didn't  exist;  she  wasn't 
allowed  to  have  any  personality.  Her  husband 
wanted  to  do  things  to  please  her,  but  his  only 
idea  was  to  do  things  he  thought  she  ought  to 
like,  never  things  that  she  did  care  for.  "He 
can't  understand,"  she  summed  up;  "and 
nothing  could  make  him  understand.  I  sup- 
pose you'd  have  to  begin  a  dozen  genera- 
tions back  to  get  it  into  his  head  that  I  'm  a 
human  being  with  tastes  and  feelings  of  my 
own."  Of  course  she  was  a  bit  hysterical,  and 
as  she  avoided  me  afterward,  I  suppose  she 
was  ashamed  of  her  confidence;  but  she  had 
really  told  me  the  secret  of  her  married  life. 
She  had  endured  it  unspoken  as  long  as  it  was 
possible,  and  she  had  to  pour  it  out. 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   223 

Yoii  know,  don't  you,  who  Kenyon  Murray 
is  ?  He  has  Hved  in  this  country  about  as  much 
as  he  has  in  England,  and  he  has  an  American 
wife.  He  did  not  come  to  America,  however, 
until  after  he  left  Oxford,  and  all  his  people 
are  in  England.  He  certainly  knows  both 
sides  of  the  question  as  well  as  any  English- 
man ever  could  know  it.  He  said  to  me  once 
that  not  one  Englishman  in  a  thousand  is  ever 
able  to  take  the  woman's  point  of  view;  and 
that  of  those  who  could,  not  one  in  a  hundred 
ever  tried  to  take  it.  Now  that  is  literally  the 
opinion  of  an  educated  Englishman,  and  one, 
too,  who  is  very  proud  of  being  English.  I 
said  frankly  that  that  seemed  to  me  a  suffi- 
cient reason  for  opposing  international  mar- 
riages. He  looked  at  his  wife,  of  whom  he  is 
tremendously  fond,  and  with  whom  he  lives 
most  happily,  and  laughed.  "You  are  entirely 
right,"  he  said,  "in  every  case  except  my 
own." 

Whenever  one  generalizes,  exceptions  have 
to  be  made,  and  the  Kenyon  Murrays  are  cer- 
tainly an  exception;  but  I  insist  that  my  gen- 
eral proposition  is  right.    The  whole  attitude 


224   A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

of  the  foreign  man,  the  attitude  which  is  sanc- 
tioned by  tradition  and  ingrained  by  environ- 
ment in  foreigners,  is  one  which  makes  the 
possible  happiness  of  an  American  girl  who 
marries  him  so  doubtful  that  international 
marriage  always  makes  me  afraid.  If  you  are 
content  to  live  on  gratified  vanity  instead  of 
affection,  by  all  means  buy  a  duke,  if  you  have 
money  enough.  If  you  expect  to  find  happi- 
ness in  sympathetic  married  love,  marry  an 
American.  The  chances  of  disappointment 
are  large  enough  and  serious  enough  in  any 
marriage,  and  no  girl  can  afford  to  increase 
them  tenfold  by  going  outside  of  her  own 
country. 

I  could  dwell  on  this  with  a  great  many 
more  excellent  reasons,  but,  thank  Heaven, 
you  are  not  rich  enough  to  tempt  the  fortune- 
hunting  titled  paupers,  and  you  have,  after  all, 
a  good  deal  of  common  sense. 

Besides,  there  is  the  man  who  was  at  the 
hunt-breakfast. 

P.  S.  Oh,  do  get  Waldron  Leigh  to  propose, 
and  then  snub  him! 


XXV 

THE  EFFECT  OF  EXPLANATIONS 

You  are  delicioiisly  young,  my  dear !  You  ask 
me  how  you  had  better  explain  to  a  man  that 
you  really  don't  care  for  him!  Now  if  that 
means  that  you  actually  do  care,  why,  have  all 
the  explanations  you  please,  and  what  kind 
they  are  can't  make  much  difference.  If  you 
have  a  secret  weakness  for  the  fellow,  by  all 
means  explain  and  re-explain  that  you  are 
utterly  and  entirely  indifferent  to  him.  I  fancy 
that  is  the  truth  of  the  matter,  and  that  you 
are  only  trying  to  make  my  advice  an  excuse 
by  which  you  can  cheat  yourself  into  thinking 
your  wishes  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  mat- 
ter. I  've  done  things  of  that  sort  myself,  and  I 
sympathize  with  your  desire,  but  I  won't  be  a 
cat's-paw,  if  I  am  a  godmother. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  —  as  is  remotely  pos- 
sible, —  you  are  in  earnest  and  do  not  care  for 
him,  in  the  name  of  Heaven  don't  muddle 


22G  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

things  up  with  exphanations.  Emotional  ex- 
planations between  a  man  and  a  woman  never 
cleared  anything  up  yet,  except  to  make  evi- 
dent affection  that  had  been  hidden.  Beyond 
that  they  only  make  complications. 

Just  turn  the  cold  light  of  common  sense  on 
the  question  for  a  little,  my  dear;  bring  it  out 
of  the  dusky  corners  of  a  sentimental  girlish 
twilight  into  the  day.  You  must  see  that  you 
can't  have  personal  discussions  with  a  man 
about  love  —  especially  with  a  man  who  is,  or 
thinks  he  is,  in  love  with  you  —  without  mak- 
ing things  worse.  It  is  like  stirring  a  fire  to  put 
it  out.  If  he  really  cares  for  you,  he  will  only 
care  for  you  more  if  you  tell  him  you  are  so 
sorry  for  him,  that  you  never  meant  anything, 
that  you  shall  never  forgive  yourself  if  he  is 
unhappy,  that  you  hope  to  be  his  friend,  and 
all  that  sort  of  rubbish.  You  know  yourself 
how  you  'd  cast  down  your  eyes,  and  how  be- 
coming that  would  be;  how  you'd  put  on  a 
soft  tone,  and  be  so  sweet,  and  dear,  and  sym- 
pathetic ! 

Out  upon  you !  I  believe  you  know  perfectly 
well  that  the  effect  of  talking  and  "oxj)lain- 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    227 

ing"  —  Heaven  save  the  mark!  —  would  be 
to  make  your  lover  more  in  earnest.  You'd 
be  salving  your  conscience,  I  dare  say,  by  pre- 
tending to  yourself  you  were  trying  to  warn 
him  and  to  save  him  pain,  and  all  the  rest  of 
that  moral  twaddle;  when  the  sneaking  truth 
is  that  you  'd  be  just  feeding  your  own  vanity 
by  seeing  how  much  he  dotes  on  you.  Any 
girl,  or  at  least  almost  any  girl,  when  it  comes 
to  her  admirers,  enjoys  teasing  the  victim  on 
the  hook,  just  for  the  fun  of  seeing  how  he 
wriggles  and  squirms.  You  know  you  like 
the  luxury  of  pitying  any  poor  wretch  that 's 
miserable  because  he  can't  have  you !  You  are 
my  goddaughter;  but  even  that  has  n't  made 
an  angel  of  you.   You  are  a  woman  still. 

I'm  a  worldly  old  thing,  I  dare  say,  and 
may  not  be  able  to  judge  fairly;  but  I  doubt 
if  any  woman  ever  lived  that  really  wanted  a 
man  to  stop  loving  her.  If  a  wretch  bothers 
too  much,  a  girl  may  suppose  she  wishes  him 
to  get  over  his  fondness;  but  what  she  really 
would  like  would  be  for  him  to  stop  bothering 
and  go  on  loving.  A  lot  of  women  have  too 
much  pride  to  show  that  they  care,  and  some 


228  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

too  much  to  own  to  themselves  that  they  care, 
—  which  is  not  at  all  the  same  thing !  —  for 
the  admiration  of  men  greatly  below  them. 
I  have  my  doubts  about  this;  and  I  remem- 
ber the  Frenchwoman,  —  Madame  Recamier, 
was  it  ?  You  are  only  just  out  of  school,  and 
ought  to  remember,  —  who  set  such  store  by 
the  fact  that  the  common  passers  on  the  street 
turned  to  look  at  her.  At  any  rate,  given  a 
man  about  whom  a  woman  might  possibly 
care  at  all,  and  she  never  willingly  gives  up  his 
devotion.  She  may  be  really  sorry  that  he 
should  suffer  from  hopeless  affection,  but  this 
only  gives  a  sort  of  delicious,  faintly  sub-acid 
flavor  to  her  pleasure.  Her  inmost  conviction 
of  course  is  that  his  passion  is  the  most  natu- 
ral thing  in  the  world,  and  quite  inevitable. 
A  great  many  women  are  modest  enough  not 
to  think  a  priori  —  that  in  your  language,  my 
dear,  means  off  their  own  bat  —  that  they  are 
irresistible;  but  when  it  comes  to  the  testi- 
mony of  the  faithful  attachment  of  a  man,  no 
she-creature  ever  created  could  fail  to  believe 
such  proof  of  her  fascinations.  Every  one  of  us 
knows  when  a  man  is  making  a  fool  of  himself 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   229 

by  falling  in  love  with  somebody  else;  but  no- 
thing in  the  universe  can  convince  a  woman 
in  her  heart  of  hearts  that  a  man  is  n't  justified 
for  bein":  in  love  with  her.  That  is  one  reason 
why  it  is  so  hard  for  us  to  discourage  any  man 
who  's  in  love  with  us.  We  feel  so  deeply  the 
justice  of  his  devotion  that  it  almost  seems 
morally  wrong  to  try  to  end  it. 

Of  course  the  exception  is  when  a  woman  is 
herself  genuinely  in  love  with  the  man.  Then 
she  is  apt  to  have  so  exalted  an  idea  of  his  mer- 
its as  to  be  overwhelmed  at  his  condescension 
in  thinking  of  her  for  a  moment;  and  even  if 
he  is  unworthy  of  her,  she  will  idealize  him 
into  a  creature  to  provoke  the  highest  admi- 
ration. I  smile  at  myself,  my  dear,  when  I 
think  of  my  own  husband.  Fortunately  he 
is  a  trump,  but  if  he  were  n't,  I  know  I  should 
contrive  to  imagine  he  was  something  extraor- 
dinary, —  if  I  did  n't  stop  being  fond  of  him. 
That's  too  deep  water  for  me  to  swim  in, 
however;  and  besides,  it's  too  personal  to  be 
discussed. 

I  have  often  thought  of  the  matter  in  gen- 
eral terms.    The  way  in  which  good  women. 


230  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

fine  women,  will  keep  in  their  minds  an  image 
of  their  husbands  which  is  fantastically  and 
pitifully  unreal  is  one  of  the  wonders  of  life. 

There  is  Mrs. ,  never  mind  who.  She  is  one 

of  the  most  straightforward  of  human  beings; 
and  her  husband  has  n't  an  honest  fibre  in  him 
anywhere.  The  Day  of  Judgment  will  not 
make  him  see  the  truth,  for  he's  morally  color- 
blind, and  he'd  have  to  be  so  changed  to  be 
able  to  look  at  a  fact  squarely  that  he'd  lose 
his  identity  and  be  somebody  else.  Yet  all  the 
same  she  adores  him.  She  who's  truthfulness 
itself  in  every  other  earthly  way,  who  has  n't  a 
thought  that  is  n't  like  white  light  from  heaven, 
has  set  up  for  herself  a  stupendous  lie  in  the 
shape  of  a  glorified  image  of  her  husband,  and 
adores  this  false  god  as  the  visible  emblem 
of  all  truth.  It  is  sublime!  Only  somehow  I 
always  feel  like  crying  when  I  think  of  it. 

It  is  all  very  well  to  laugh  at  the  White 
Queen  in  "Alice,"  who  believed  I  don't  remem- 
ber how  many  impossible  things  every  day 
before  breakfast,  but  anybody  who  is  unable 
to  believe  impossible  things  is  not  a  woman. 

I  have  almost  forgotten  where  I  started,  and 


A   WORLDLY   GODxMOTIIER   231 

what  I  am  writing  about,  and  I  cannot  read 
over  half  a  dozen  pages  of  crooked  scrawls  to 
find  out.  I  always  did  hate  my  own  handwrit- 
ing, and  I  have  been  ready  to  murder  Sherman 
because  he  insists  that  it's  characteristic.  I 
am  glad  you  write  a  better  hand.  Be  careful 
always  to  have  your  notes  look  well,  especially 
to  the  men.  Letters  are  not  so  important,  for 
they  are  generally  sent  to  somebody  who  is  not 
likely  to  be  so  particular.  —  I  have  a  dim 
notion  that  I  started  to  scout  your  absurd 
notion  that..you  'd  better  explain  to  some  man 
that  you  never  could,  etc.,  etc.  I  hope  I've 
convinced  you  that  whatever  else  you  actually 
mean  and  think  in  the  matter,  it  is  not  in  the 
least  likely  to  be  what  you  think  you  think, 
or  what  you  suppose  you  mean;  and  that  it 
is  absolute  nonsense  to  explain,  unless  there  is 
no  need  of  an  explanation. 

As  that  is  really  the  whole  matter,  I  think  it 
best  to  stop  before  I  get  involved  in  another 
snarl  of  digressions. 

P.  S.  I  wonder  if  the  hunt-breakfast  man 
would  show  up  well  in  an  explanation  ? 


XXVI 

THE  OBJECT  OF  LIFE 

My  dear,  what  has  he  done  —  whichever  he 
it  is  —  that  you  ask  so  pathetically  what  is  the 
object  of  life!  As  your  godmother,  I  can  only 
refer  you  to  the  prayer-book  or  the  catechism, 
and  I  am  sorry  to  say  that,  without  looking  it 
up,  I  am  a  little  uncertain  just  what  answer 
you  will  find  in  either.  Of  course  I  might 
reply  in  phrases  carelessly  or  conventionally 
repeated  from  the  Bible;  but  I  am  old-fash- 
ioned, and  have  nerves  over  the  modern  habit 
of  quoting  from  the  Bible  in  an  irreverently 
casual  way.  If,  instead  of  answering  as  a 
godmother,  I  write  as  an  ordinary  mortal,  a 
worldly  old  woman  such  as  I  am,  I  should  say 
that  the  object  of  life  is  to  love  my  husband, 
to  preserve  my  figure,  and  to  enjoy  life  as  well 
as  I  may. 

The  trouble  is  that  this  will  not  appeal  to 
you  in  the  least,  and  that  it  really  only  puts 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   233 

things  in  a  different  way  without  solving  the 
question.  You  generally  do  have  a  good  time, 
as  far  as  I  can  make  out;  you  are  too  young  to 
have  to  consider  your  figure;  and  you  have  n't 
any  husband.  You  either  have  not  found  your 
ideal  man,  or  something  is  wrong  in  regard  to 
him,  so  that  you  are  in  no  mood  to  be  told  that 
it  is  the  chief  of  your  duties  to  love  him,  or  to 
believe  that  thereon  hang  all  the  law  and  the 
prophets.  —  See !  Here  am  I  quoting  Scrip- 
ture in  the  way  I  object  to!  —  Still,  your  case 
is  not  unlike  some  that  have  come  under  my 
observation;  and  probably  the  most  satisfac- 
tory, because  the  most  truthful,  thing  I  can 
answer  to  your  doleful  query  is  that  the  object 
of  your  life  just  now  is  and  should  be  to  be 
sure  you  have  found  your  Darby,  and  that 
you  are  his  Joan. 

When  I  was  a  girl,  it  seemed  to  me  the  very 
most  unjust  thing  in  the  whole  management 
of  the  world  that  a  man  can  go  about  looking 
for  a  mate,  while  a  woman  has  to  wait  for  one 
to  find  her.  I  have  learned  by  the  teaching 
of  innumerable  years  that  this  is  the  greatest 
blessing  Providence  has  bestowed  upon  us. 


234  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

The  unfortunate  men  exhaust  all  their  percep- 
tions hunting,  hunting,  hunting;  and  they  are 
completely  blinded  by  the  theory  that  they  do 
the  choosing.  They  are  so  sure  of  this  as  to  be 
in  constant  danger  of  being  captured  without 
the  slightest  idea  what  is  happening  to  them. 
We  have  only  to  sit  quiet,  —  to  lie  low  like 
Brer  Fox,  —  observe  them  as  they  parade 
before  us,  and  when  we  wish,  take  the  man 
that  pleases  us.  At  least,  that  is  what  I  did.  I 
do  have  a  faint  remembrance  that  some  other 
girls  wanted  the  same  man,  and  did  n't  get 
him ;  but  of  course  they  don't  count.  The  men 
are  really  all  the  time  on  trial  before  us  women, 
and  we  have  the  actual  decision. 

There  are  complications  when  two  girls  fix 
on  the  same  man.  Any  woman  might  have 
any  man  in  the  world,  if  other  women  did  n't 
interfere.  No  man  ever  lived  that  could  defend 
himself  from  matrimony  if  women  really 
wanted  him.  If  he  could,  he  was  a  monster! 
When  women  get  to  scrambling  over  a  man, 
—  which  is  a  contemptible  thing,  for  they 
know  he  fairly  belongs  to  the  one  that  discov- 
ered him,  —  accident  and  circumstances  have 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   235 

a  good  deal  to  do  with  the  result ;  but  I  hope  I 
know  you  well  enough  to  be  sure  you  are  not 
unhappy  from  any  complication  of  that  sort. 
If  you  wished  for  a  particular  man,  I  should 
be  confident  you  could  get  him. 

I  've  always  been  sorry  for  the  girls  that  are 
so  foolish  or  so  unfortunate  as  to  want  a  man 
that  belongs  to  somebody  else;  and,  for  that 
matter,  I  pity  those  who  do  not  know  how  to 
secure  the  right  one.  Not  to  get  switched  off 
into  that,  however,  I  want  to  stick  to  my  text, 
and  insist  that  just  now  the  object  of  life  with 
you  should  be  to  select  and  secure  the  proper 
husband. 

I  can  see  you  shy  at  that  word  "secure," 
and  swell  out  your  nostril,  as  if  I  had  proposed 
something  unmaidenly  or  beneath  your  dig- 
nity. My  dear,  I  utterly  disclaim  any  ill-bred 
or  vulgar  meaning.  I  only  wish  to  say  frankly 
that  at  your  age  the  question  of  being  properly 
married  is  of  an  importance  paramount  to  any- 
thing else.  You  know  this,  and  if  you  pretend 
to  think  otherwise,  it  is  either  idiocy  or  af- 
fectation. Unhappily  there  are  foolish  girls 
to-day  who  have  had  their  heads  turned  by 


236  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

the  pestiferous  babble  of  that  most  monstrous 
of  unsexed  hybrids,  the  so-called  "modern 
woman,"  and  who  regard  themselves  as  very 
clever  when  they  talk  or  think  about  a  "  higher 
destiny  than  mere  domestic  servitude,"  as  one 
of  them  said  in  my  hearing  not  long  ago. 
Heaven  forbid  that  you  should  be  such  a  fool ! 
Any  normal,  wholesome  life  is  some  sort  of  a 
servitude,  and  domestic  servitude,  if  by  that 
one  means  being  a  good  wife  and  mother,  an 
inspiration  to  husband  and  children,  a  maker 
of  that  most  rare  and  most  beautiful  of  earthly 
inventions,  a  home,  seems  to  me  preferable  to 
servitude  to  some  silly  fad,  some  barren,  illogi- 
cal theory,  or,  worse  yet,  to  mere  notoriety! 

I  think  that  a  very  pretty  paragraph,  my 
dear!  But  I  did  n't  write  it  just  for  the  sound. 
I  mean  every  word  of  it.  I  accept  the  state- 
ment of  the  Bible,  "male  and  female  created 
he  them,"  and  as  I  do  not  think  it  probable 
that  all  the  protests  "advanced  women"  may 
or  can  make  are  likely  to  persuade  Providence 
that  the  provisions  of  creation  were  a  mistake, 
it  seems  to  me  better  to  accept  things  as  they 
are,  and  to  shape  life  accordingly. 


A   WORLDLY    GODMOTHER   237 

I  remember  that  once  in  my  girlhood  I  got 
into  a  petty  fit  over  my  limitations,  and  told 
my  father  it  seemed  to  me  very  unjust  that 
women  should  be  made  with  so  much  less 
chance  in  life  than  men.  "  Have  you  ever  been 
a  man,  my  child  ?  "  he  said.  "  If  you  have,  you 
know  the  limitations  of  our  sex,  and  of  course 
can  judge."  I  confess  that  I  was  not  wholly 
convinced,  but  I  did  get  it  into  my  head  that 
there  were  at  least  two  sides  to  that  question. 
At  any  rate,  I  had  the  sense  in  the  long  run  to 
see  that  if  I  had  been  born  to  a  circumscribed 
lot,  I  should  be  a  fool  to  spend  my  strength 
fretting  about  it. 

I  am  getting  dreadfully  far  away  from  the 
"object  of  life"  question,  I  dare  say  you 
think ;  but  really  I  am  talking  about  that  and 
nothing  else.  We  are  women,  my  dear  child, 
and  it  is  the  lot  of  women  to  be  wives  and 
mothers.  Many  women  are  happy  and  useful 
who  are  neither ;  but  they  are  in  a  way  abnor- 
mal. It  is  the  object  of  your  life  to  be  properly 
and  happily  mated  with  a  noble  man.  Every 
woman  knows  that  marriage  is  the  normal 
and  legitimate  condition  to  which  she  should 


238   A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

aspire;  and  when  you  come  across  one  of  the 
females  to-day,  rather  numerous,  who  deny 
this,  you  may  be  sure  that  personal  bitterness, 
personal  vanity,  or  sheer  silliness  inspires  her. 
She  has  been  warped  by  some  painful  experi- 
ence, she  is  desirous  of  posing  as  the  cham- 
pion of  her  sex,  or  she  has  not  the  power  of 
judging  life  broadly  and  logically. 

This  very  likely  seems  to  you  harsh;  but  go 
over  the  champions  of  celibacy,  the  women 
who  directly  and  indirectly  advocate  a  life  that 
is  founded  on  the  idea  that  our  sex  is  to  be 
independent  of  the  other,  and  you  will  find 
that  I  am  not  wrong.  Truth  is  apt  to  be  harsh ; 
and  the  truth  that  we  cannot  get  on  without 
husbands  is  almost  as  great  as  the  fact  that 
men  without  wives  would  be  the  most  help- 
less, hopeless,  unfulfilled  creatures  imaginable. 

And  the  truth  of  this  has  been  hidden  in  the 
innermost  corner  of  the  mind  of  every  sane 
woman  since  there  began  to  be  sane  women 
on  this  little  round  globe! 


XXVII 

THE  TOUCHSTONE  OF  TRUTH 

I  HAD  to  stop  yesterday  without  saying  any- 
thing I  started  to  say.  I  knew  that  when  you 
asked  me  what  is  the  object  of  life,  you  only 
wanted  sympathy.  Of  course  I  have  n't  any 
idea  what  the  trouble  is,  and  the  very  fact  that 
you  asked  the  question  showed  well  enough 
that  in  trying  to  do  your  duty  and  get  happily 
married,  you  had  found  something  that  went 
wrong  and  hurt.  I  am  sorry.  I  can  only  say 
in  general  terms  that  I  know  how  horrid  it  is 
when  HE  does  n't  understand,  or  seems  to  have 
fallen  into  the  clutches  of  some  other  girl,  or 
has  been  unresponsive,  or  any  one  of  the  in- 
numerable things  that  may  happen. 

I  am  obliged  to  guess  a  good  deal  about  you, 
and  to  judge  of  your  aifairs  on  general  princi- 
ples, for  you  write  chiefly  in  parables  and  co- 
nundrums ;  girls  are  rather  apt  to  do  that  when 
they  are  in  earnest.    I  can  only  treat  you  as  if 


240  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

you  were  a  sort  of  algebraic  symbol  of  the  sex; 
and  the  process  is  as  trying  to  me  as  it  is  likely 
to  be  unsatisfactory  to  you.  If  you  would  only 
tell  me,  —  but  if  you  could,  you  would  n't  be 
you;   so  there  is  the  end  of  that. 

In  the  way  of  advice  I  have  only  two  things 
to  say.  One  is  to  be  as  hopeful  and  as  patient 
as  you  can;  and  the  other  is  never  to  let  any 
false  pride  or  any  want  of  frankness  stand 
between  you  and  a  man  you  care  for.  The 
first  does  n't  need  any  dwelling  on ;  although 
I  might  say  a  good  deal  about  how  completely 
the  world  may  seem  to  have  gone  all  wrong 
one  minute,  only  to  appear  brighter  the  next 
from  the  very  contrast.  Things  are  seldom  as 
bad  as  they  look,  —  although  when  they  are. 
Heaven  help  us,  for  then  they  are  apt  to  be  a 
great  deal  worse  than  they  look!  In  general 
terms,  however,  it  is  always  well  to  regard 
troubles  and  bothers  as  pin-pricks,  of  which 
the  smart  will  be  over  directly.  This  is  so 
obviously  true  that  it  probably  sounds  to  you 
untrue;  and  in  any  case,  there  is  no  use  in  my 
dwelling  on  it. 

The  other  point,  however,  needs  to  be  in- 


A   WORLDLY    GODMOTHER    241 

sistcd  on,  and  said  over  again  and  again,  until 
a  girl  can  get  the  idea  transformed  into  a  prin- 
ciple. We  all  begin  by  feeling  that  if  a  man 
really  cares  for  us,  he  will  understand  how  we 
regard  him,  how  we  think,  and  all  the  little 
shades  of  sentiment  that  no  human  being  ever 
did  or  ever  can  understand  in  another.  "He 
should  have  known  how  I  felt"  has  been  the 
epitaph  of  many  a  girl's  happiness,  and  of 
the  happiness  of  many  a  man,  too,  I  suppose ; 
although  men  get  over  such  a  hurt  more 
quickly.  If  a  man  evidently  or  apparently  has 
not  understood,  don't  fall  into  this  error  of 
assuming  that  he  is  supernaturally  gifted  with 
the  power  to  read  your  thoughts,  or  the  more 
stupid  error  of  regarding  his  power  of  percep- 
tion as  an  index  of  his  affection.  If  the  matter 
is  trivial,  forget  it;  if  it  is  important,  be  per- 
fectly frank,  and  speak  to  him. 

I  am  not  sufficiently  clever  as  an  analyzer 
of  human  motives  to  be  able  to  say  what  femi- 
nine qualities  make  it  so  hard  for  us  to  be  frank 
with  a  man  when  we  care  for  him.  I  should 
need  to  be  Henry  James,  and  Henry  James 
with  double  his  usual  number  of  parentheses, 


242  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

so  that  no  human  being  could  even  guess  at 
my  meaning  when  1  had  got  it  into  words.  I 
do  know  that  we  take  refuge  in  all  sorts  of 
excuses  to  avoid  saying  honestly  that  we  have 
been  misunderstood.  We  begin  by  telling  our- 
selves that  as  the  obtuseness  of  the  man  is 
proof  positive  that  he  does  n't  care  for  us,  it  is 
of  course  of  no  use  to  explain  anything.  We 
go  on  with  the  assumption  that  if  we  speak  he 
will  think  us  unmaidenly,  and  we  are  apt  to 
dwell  on  that  idea  until  rational  speech  be- 
comes impossible. 

To  set  little  misunderstandings  right  frankly 
and  clearly,  without  an  air  that  gives  the  mat- 
ter an  undue  importance,  is  the  secret  of  pre- 
serving friendship,  and  it  is  the  secret  no  less 
of  preserving  love.  Beware  of  treating  small 
matters  as  if  they  were  great  ones,  and  you  will 
then  be  able  to  handle  anything  you  wish  to 
explain  with  a  light  touch  which  will  make  it 
easy  for  you  to  say  and  for  him  to  receive. 

If  it  comes  to  a  misunderstanding  really 
important,  however,  ask  yourself  whether  the 
man  is  so  little  to  you  that  you  are  ready  to 
let  him  go  out  of  your  life  rather  than  to  make 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    243 

the  sacrifice  of  speaking  fully.  I  am  not  coun- 
seling you  to  be  undignified,  unmaidenly, 
unwomanly ;  I  am  only  saying  that  it  is  better 
to  be  honest  at  a  hard  moment  than  to  regret 
it  through  life. 

I  write  in  what  may  seem  cold  generalities; 
but  I  can  do  no  better,  since  I  know  nothing 
of  the  circumstances.  Very  likely  by  this  time 
the  whole  trouble  has  been  set  right,  and  has 
been  forgotten.  In  that  case,  treat  this  letter 
as  an  old  woman  I  knew  in  the  country  treated 
her  medicine.  Some  prescription  for  the  tooth- 
ache was  late  in  reaching  her,  so  that  the  tooth 
had  been  taken  out  before  the  medicine  ar- 
rived. She  remarked  that  it  was  just  as  well, 
for  now  she  would  have  a  remedy  in  the  house 
to  take  in  case  she  had  one  of  her  frequent 
attacks  of  rheumatism.  You  may  not  need  my 
advice  by  the  time  it  gets  to  you,  and  I  hope 
you  won't;  but  it  is  of  universal  application, 
and  you  may  keep  it  on  hand  to  apply  when 
some  other  trouble  arises.  The  advice  will  still 
be  good,  even  if  the  difficulty  is  entirely  dif- 
ferent. 


XXVIII 

THE  SLIME  OF  THE  DIVORCE-COURT 

Your  protest  that  my  view  of  marriage  is 
antiquated  and  outgrown  does  not,  it  seems  to 
me,  ring  entirely  true.  At  any  rate,  I  stand  by 
my  guns,  and  insist  that  marriage  is  the  nor- 
mal aim  of  any  sane  young  woman.  I  know 
all  the  modern  talk,  and  am  fully  aware  how 
many  latch-key  girls  are  persuading  them- 
selves to  the  contrary ;  but  this  does  not  move 
me  in  the  least.  I  have  heard  all  the  babble 
about  the  slavery  of  marriage,  —  which  is  too 
often  true.  Heaven  knows !  —  I  have  heard 
philanthropists  declaim,  and  unlovely  women 
gabble;  I  have  even  read  Ibsen:  —  I  am  will- 
ing, too,  to  acknowledge  that  the  half  has  not 
been  told;  for  I  have  looked  into  some  wo- 
men's lives,  and  I  know  that  nobody  has  yet 
succeeded  in  expressing  what  a  hell  marriage 
may  be.  All  that  I  cannot  help;  and  neither 
can  I  help  knowing  that  it  is  often  as  bad  for 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   245 

men  as  for  women.  It  is  bad  enough  for  any 
woman  to  live  with  some  men,  but  God  help 
any  man  that  has  to  live  with  some  women! 

Fire  will  burn,  and  water  will  drown;  but  I 
do  not  on  that  account  recommend  that  you 
try  to  live  without  either.  No  more  do  I  hold 
that  a  woman  should  avoid  marriage  because 
marriage  may  make  her  miserable.  In  nine 
cases  out  of  ten,  when  marriage  is  a  failure, 
I  think  the  fault  is  with  the  woman;  or,  to 
speak  more  exactly,  I  believe  the  wife  has 
more  power  to  prevent  disaster  than  the  hus- 
band, and  more  often  fails  to  do  so.  But  good 
or  bad,  with  the  fault  on  either  side  or  on  both 
sides,  marriage  is  what  we  were  made  for. 

To  you  as  woman  to  woman  I  may  say 
frankly  what,  as  a  matter  of  principle  and  of 
loyalty  to  my  sex,  I  would  never  confess  to 
a  man,  that  marriage  must  be  pretty  bad  or 
old-maidhood  is  a  great  deal  worse.  We  are 
made  so,  my  dear.  Male  and  female  created,  as 
I  quoted  from  the  Bible  the  other  day,  and 
paired  off  to  the  end  of  time.  Men  get  on 
somehow  without  wives,  and  I  know,  as  I  have 
said  over  and  over,  some  delightful  old  maids, 


246  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

—  women  to  love  and  respect ;  but  no  man 
lives  single  without  becoming  narrow  and  in 
most  cases  selfish,  and  no  woman  reaches  her 
best  if  she  lives  a  single  life.  What  wives  and 
mothers  those  delightful  old  maids  would  have 
made!  No  mortal  woman  can  help  becoming 
narrow  if  she  remain  unmarried.  A  fine  tem- 
perament and  a  sense  of  humor  may  help  her, 
and  her  surroundings  may  develop  her;  but 
in  any  case  she  has  missed  the  best  of  life. 
Not  to  have  known  what  it  is  to  be  a  wife  and 
a  mother,  not  to  have  had  the  pain  of  it  even, 

—  I  am  a  worldly  old  thing,  my  dear,  but  the 
bare  idea  of  not  having  been  Sherman's  mate 
and  the  mother  of  his  son  brings  tears  into  my 
wicked  old  eyes !  I  have  had  my  share  of  hard 
times,  and  marriage  may  mean  a  good  deal  of 
suffering  in  one  way  and  another,  —  but  not 
to  have  had  it!  That  is  too  dreadful  to  think 
of.  Never  mind  who  tells  you  to  the  con- 
trary, and  never  mind  what  it  costs,  if  you 
can  be  the  loved  and  respected  wife  of  a  man 
who  fills  your  heart.  That  pays  for  every- 
thing. 

I  did  n't  mean  to  write  in  this  impassioned 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   247 

style;  and  I  take  breath  to  remember  that 
the  difficulty  is,  that  you  may  fear  being  a  wife 
not  loved  and  respected.  Any  wife  may  be 
respected  if  she  chooses  to  be,  so  I  do  not  pro- 
pose to  go  into  that.  For  the  love;  —  well,  my 
child,  it  is  a  hard  saying  for  a  girl  to  accept, 
but  to  have  loved  —  simply  to  have  loved 
really  and  truly  —  seems  to  me  to  be  worth 
anything  it  can  cost.  Unless  a  girl  marries  a 
monster,  moreover,  she  may  almost  always  be 
loved,  provided  she  start  out  in  marriage  with 
a  man  she  cares  for  and  whom  she  can  respect. 
If  he  finds  her  worthy,  love  is  almost  sure  to 
come.  There  are  men  who  are  brutes,  and 
brutes  they  would  remain  if  they  married  the 
best  women  in  the  world ;  but  they  are  luckily 
rare,  and  a  girl  may  generally  recognize  them 
before  marriage.  Girls  are  so  made  that  they 
are  pathetically  exposed  to  the  danger  of  per- 
suading themselves  that  they  can  reform  men, 
and  remake  men,  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  I  can 
only  pity  them;  and  I  am  sure  you  are  not 
likely  to  fall  into  that  appalling  error. 

The  arguments  for  and  against  marriage 
I  spare    you    farther.     They    are    generally 


248  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

unpleasant.  It  is  such  a  pity  to  rob  the  whole 
relation  of  its  romance,  as  the  generality  of 
modern  writers  insist  upon  doing.  I  am  will- 
ing to  acknowledge  the  wisdom,  or  indeed  the 
necessity,  of  matrimony,  and  beyond  that  I 
should  like  to  be  spared  as  far  as  possible 
from  the  reasons  physiological,  psychological, 
political,  and  ethical.  So  «iuch  of  life  is  un- 
avoidably hard  and  dry  matter  of  fact  that  I 
insist  upon  preserving  about  love  and  mar- 
riage all  the  illusions  possible.  Since  the  cen- 
tral fact  is  capable  of  standing  the  test  of  all 
sorts  of  logical,  statistical,  philosophical,  and 
all  the  rest  of  it  reasons,  why  may  we  women 
not  wrap  it  about  with  rosy  veils  and  charming 
delusions  ?  That  is  what  I  say  to  the  men;  to 
you,  my  dear,  since  you  are  a  woman  and  can 
understand,  I  may  whisper  that  our  illusions 
are  in  reality  the  highest  truth.  Science  argues 
the  whole  thing  out  as  one  might  weigh  a 
flower.  Is  the  perfume  of  a  blossom  any  less 
true  or  less  real  than  the  tangible  petals  be- 
cause it  is  not  to  be  gauged  by  the  swaying  of 
the  scales  ? 

What  I  mean  to  say  in  this  letter,  however, 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   249 

has  to  do  with  the  darker  side  of  married  hfe. 
I  am  Hke  one  of  the  old  prophets,  who  were 
extremely  uncomfortable  themselves  under 
the  burden  of  a  message  until  they  had  made 
everybody  else  uncomfortable  by  delivering  it, 
when  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  they  felt  better.  I 
must  say  something  of  divorce,  for  you  cannot 
live  a  day  without  hearing  it  talked  about,  and 
you  should  have  some  sort  of  definite  and 
rational  opinions  about  it. 

The  modern  way  of  looking  at  divorce  is  the 
natural  and  inevitable  result  of  the  attitude 
of  the  present  generation  toward  marriage.  I 
am  obliged  to  confess,  moreover,  that  this  is 
more  largely  the  result  of  the  changed  senti- 
ment of  women  than  that  of  men.  Men,  from 
pure  selfishness  if  from  nothing  else,  have 
recognized  that  society,  in  all  its  phases,  is  for 
amusement  in  a  secondary  sense  only,  and 
that  primarily  it  is  for  the  arrangement  of 
matrimony.  A  certain  type  of  modern  woman 
has  revolted,  naturally  enough,  from  the  self- 
ishness and  the  cruelty  of  which  man  at  his 
worst  is  capable ;  and  they  have  not  been  wise 
enough  to  see  that  not  on  that  account  can  the 


250  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

laws  of  nature  or  of  society  be  altered.  They 
have  clamored  —  oh,  how  I  do  hate  the 
clamoring  of  a  public  woman !  —  to  have 
human  life  and  social  conditions  rearranged 
according  to  their  ideas.  They  have  effected 
—  the  crowding  of  the  divorce-courts. 

I  was  at  a  luncheon  in  New  York  not  long 
ago  when  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  entire  con- 
versation turned  on  the  question  whether  this 
woman  would  get  a  divorce  so  as  to  marry  a 
specified  man,  whether  now  that  another  man 
had  got  his  divorce  he  would  marry  a  specified 
woman,  and  so  on.  I  felt,  when  I  came  away, 
that  if  there  were  anything  in  the  nature  of  a 
moral  Russian  bath  in  New  York,  I  would  go 
and  try  to  get  rid  of  a  sensation  of  moral  un- 
cleanliness.  It  made  me  feel  that  American 
society  has  come  to  be  horribly  plebeian.  This 
is  largely,  of  course,  because  the  vulgar  New 
York  plutocracy  is  so  much  in  evidence.  An 
aristocracy  of  money  must  always  be  common 
and  unclean;  and  the  New  York  "smart  set" 
is,  I  suppose,  the  most  horribly  vulgar  social 
phenomenon  the  world  ever  produced.  At 
least,  I   hope  so!     Even   tlie  ]K)rk-nourished 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   251 

coteries  of  the  West  are  refined  by  contrast. 
The  divorce-court  records  of  New  York  and 
Newport  —  and  Boston  is  rapidly  coming  on 
in  the  scale  too  —  are  the  most  humiliating 
indictment  that  could  exist  on  the  conditions 
of  social  life  in  this  country. 

To  me  it  is  horrible  to  see  the  callousness  of 
the  modern  "smart  "  woman  on  this  subject. 
A  year  ago  a  divorce-suit  was  in  progress 
which  involved  the  besliming  of  some  of  the 
families  best  known  in  Boston.  Of  course  the 
newspapers  printed  every  incriminating  letter 
that  was  introduced,  and  the  most  shocking 
epistles  to  and  from  the  woman  whose  hus- 
band was  divorcing  her  were  in  the  hands  of 
anybody  who  had  not  self-respect  enough  to 
keep  from  reading  them.  On  one  occasion 
the  sister  of  this  woman  was  at  the  Sylvan 
Club  with  a  party  of  friends,  and  on  the  tennis 
court,  amid  shrieks  of  laughter  from  the  com- 
pany, she  read  aloud  from  the  morning  paper 
letters  which  utterly  destroyed  her  sister's 
reputation.  A  charwoman  in  the  slums  would 
have  had  more  refinement!  I  can  understand 
how  these  cheap  people  have  no  moral  feeling; 


252  THE   COUNSELS    OF 

but  I  cannot  see  how  they  can  be  wilHng  to 
display  so  openly  their  lack  of  all  taste. 

There  is  only  one  decent  way  in  which  a 
woman  can  look  at  marriage,  —  and  that  is  as 
a  thing  that  is  final.  If  it  is  possible  for  her  to 
regard  the  union  as  stopping  short  of  death, 
she  is  considering  herself  in  the  light  of  a  pos- 
sible loose  woman!  I  beg  your  pardon,  but 
there's  no  other  way  of  putting  it.  Of  course 
there  are  circumstances  where  a  woman  has 
to  leave  a  man,  but  for  her  deliberately  to 
look  forward  to  such  a  possibility  before  she 
marries,  or  when  she  marries,  is  to  confess  to 
herself  that  she  is  willing  to  be  disreputa- 
ble !  Whether  she  likes  it  or  does  not,  the  fact 
will  remain  that  she  gives  herself  to  a  man 
as  a  wife  or  as  a  mistress,  and  a  wife  cannot 
conceive  of  any  end  to  union  short  of  death 
itself. 

This  sounds  extravagant  in  this  day  of  talk 
that  I  call  vile  and  of  views  which  seem  to  me 
degrading;  but  however  she  protests,  every 
modest  woman  feels  it  in  her  heart  to  be  ut- 
terly true.  She  may  sink  through  selfishness 
to  a  lower  plane  of  action,  and  if  she  does,  she 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   253 

will  generally  persuade  herself  that  she  is  con- 
verted to  a  broader  view  of  life ;  but  even  the 
vilest  woman  has  in  her  heart  somewhere  a 
spot  in  which  lodges,  so  that  it  can  never  be 
got  out,  the  conviction  of  the  sanctity  of  mar- 
riage, because  it  is  the  consecration  of  soul 
and  body  for  life  and  death. 

If  you  think  of  marriage  at  all,  think  of  it  as 
final.  Regard  it  as  a  union  which  only  death 
will  end,  whether  you  like  it,  or  whether  you 
like  it  not  at  all.  A  young  woman  of  excellent 
family,  of  unexceptional  social  position,  and 
personally  of  a  disposition  more  refined  and 
more  serious  than  that  of  most  of  the  girls  of 
her  age  and  set,  astonished  me  not  long  ago  by 
declaring  that  all  her  friends  who  were  mar- 
ried had  accepted  wedlock  with  a  perfect  un- 
derstanding that  the  divorce-court  afforded  a 
way  of  escape  if  things  became  too  uncom- 
fortable. I  refuse  to  believe  her.  I  refuse  to 
think  that  we  have  fallen  so  low  that  among 
people  of  cultivation  honest  love  is  so  much  a 
thing  of  the  past  that  a  girl  —  a  good  girl,  I 
mean  —  can  marry  a  man  with  such  a  thought 
hidden  like  a  reptile  in  her  mind.    My  answer 


254  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

to  her  remark  was :  "  My  dear,  I  did  not  know 
you  had  ever  hved  in  Chicago."  She  indig- 
nantly denied  having  ever  been  in  Chicago, 
but  she  knew  that  I  knew  how  much  of  her 
summers  she  has  of  late  years  spent  at  New- 
port. She  has  never  married,  however,  and 
can  speak  only  from  the  outside. 

If  you  decide  to  have  no  morals,  my  dear 
goddaughter,  do  cling  still  to  something  in  the 
shape  of  manners.  If  you  have  no  respect  for 
the  sanctity  of  marriage  as  it  used  to  be  be- 
lieved in,  —  and  as  even  a  worldly  old  thing 
like  me  may  still  hold  on  to  it,  thanks  to  hav- 
ing been  lucky  enough  to  get  a  husband  a  hun- 
dred times  too  good  for  me,  —  at  least  do  have 
some  regard  for  your  family,  for  yourself,  and 
for  your  children,  if  you  ever  have  any.  A  wo- 
man who  has  been  through  the  divorce-court 
hardly  comes  out  unsmirched  even  when  she 
is  conspicuously  blameless,  poor  thing;  and 
she  who  has  been  shown  to  be  in  the  wrong, 
who  has  even  owed  her  divorce  to  the  benefit 
of  a  doubt,  is  in  the  thought  of  every  living 
man  that  hears  her  name,  no  matter  how  pure- 
minded  he  may  be,  a  woman  who  has  been 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   255 

smirched.  The  divorce-court  is  the  depart- 
ment of  society  where  goods  are  stamped  as 
damaged. 

The  modern  women  who  have  protested 
against  the  tyranny  of  marriage  have  first 
made  every  discontented  wife  eager  to  break 
her  chains.  The  next  step  was  the  inevitable 
and  easy  one  of  looking  upon  marriage  as 
a  state  which  might  be  taken  on  trial,  and 
escaped  from  if  the  result  was  not  pleasing. 
Easy  divorce  inevitably  makes  easy  marriage; 
far  less  care  and  deliberation  are  needed  in  a 
case  where  any  blunder  can  be  remedied  by 
recourse  to  law. 

Two  things,  moreover,  have  greatly  helped 
this  modern  attitude  toward  marriage:  the 
growth  of  religious  disbelief  and  the  idea  of 
democracy.  The  decline  of  faith  in  religion, 
and  particularly  a  decline  of  faith  in  the 
church,  naturally  leaves  room  for  the  growth 
of  a  spirit  of  self-indulgence.  People  frankly 
vent  their  selfishness  by  indulging  the  im- 
pulses of  the  moment.  They  are  not  restrained 
by  the  fear  of  consequences  in  another  life, 
and  they  are  prepared  to  run  the  risk  of  any- 


25G  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

thing  that  may  happen  in  this  one.  They  say 
boldly  that  they  ])ropose  to  get  all  the  pleasure 
out  of  life  they  can,  and  they  utterly  refuse  to 
be  hampered  by  any  sense  of  responsibility. 
Society,  family,  even  children,  are  ignored,  as 
far  as  recognition  goes  of  any  claim  that  calls 
for  self-sacrifice.  These  people  live  in  openly 
selfish  disregard  of  anything  but  impulse.  To 
my  thinking,  they  prove  how  impossible  it  is 
to  have  a  society  without  religion ;  and  at  any 
rate,  they  show  what  we  come  to  if  we  give  up 
the  idea  of  responsibility  to  others. 

Then  democracy,  with  its  nonsense  about 
equality,  comes  in  to  break  down  all  responsi- 
bility to  one's  position.  The  rising  generation 
are  always  ready  enough  to  take  advantage  of 
the  standing  that  has  been  won  for  their  family 
by  ancestors  who  made  sacrifices  to  duty,  who 
put  their  pleasure  second  to  the  claims  of 
society  and  of  the  family;  but  they  decline  to 
do  anything  to  keep  up  the  standard.  They 
would  hate  their  ancestors  for  having  dis- 
graced the  name,  but  they  do  not  trouble  to 
consider  the  welfare  of  their  descendants  as 
being  any  reason  why  they  should  not  put  into 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   257 

the  family  history  a  page  smutted  by  the  record 
of  a  divorce-scandal. 

In  cases  in  which  women  and  men  must  be 
divorced,  the  only  thing  to  be  said  is  that  this 
is  a  fearful  misfortune,  and  that  the  sufferer  is 
to  be  pitied.  When  divorce  is  the  fault  of  a 
man  or  of  a  woman,  when  it  is  a  means  of  self- 
indulgence,  I  claim  that  no  decent  woman 
ought  to  recognize  the  divorced  person  as  even 
tolerable  in  self-respecting  society.  I  have 
never  broken  this  rule  myself,  and  I  am  happy 
to  say  that  no  woman  who  has  been  connected 
with  a  divorce-case,  in  any  way  but  as  a  misfor- 
tune for  which  she  was  not  responsible,  has 
ever  been  invited  into  my  house. 

It  all  makes  me  very  sad,  dear  girlie.  There 
is  very  little  good  in  writing  about  it,  I  sup- 
pose. I  am  not  sure  where  the  remedy  lies; 
but  I  do  pray  Heaven  —  and  that  with  the 
whole  strength  there  is  in  me  —  that  I  may 
never  live  to  see  the  name  of  anybody  I  care 
for  dragged  through  the  slime  of  the  divorce- 
court  ! 


XXIX 

"  WHEN  LOVE  SHOOK  HANDS  WITH  TOVERTY  " 

Had  you  better  marry  a  poor  man  ?  By  all 
means!  Your  whole  training,  your  entire  life, 
have  bred  you  for  just  that  thing.  You  have 
had  everything  that  money  could  buy,  and  so 
you  are  naturally  fitted  to  go  without.  You 
must  have  proved  the  worthlessness  of  riches, 
and  you  are  admirably  fitted  now  —  picked 
out,  predestined,  as  it  were  —  to  be  the  wife 
of  the  poorest  man  you  can  find. 

It  may  be  a  little  hard  on  the  poor  man. 
If  he  is  so  unlucky  as  to  care  for  you,  he  will 
very  likely  be  unhappy  to  see  you  go  with- 
out things;  and  he  may  fret  at  not  being  able 
to  give  you  what  you  've  been  accustomed  to 
have.  But  he  will  of  course  be  used  to  being 
fretted,  so  that  is  no  matter.  I  don't  know  how 
well  you  will  manage  to  hide  your  discomfort; 
and  it  is  probable  he  will  have  a  pretty  fair 
idea  of  how  you  miss  luxury,  —  an  idea  more 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   259 

clear  and  keen  in  proportion  to  his  refinement 
and  his  unselfishness.  1  hope  he'll  be  thick- 
skinned,  because  that  would  make  it  easier  for 
him ;  but  if  he  is  n't,  he  has  nobody  to  thank 
but  himself.  He  should  have  known  better 
than  to  fall  in  love  with  you.  His  discomfort 
will  be  part  of  the  price  he  will  pay  for  the 
happiness  of  calling  you  his  wife. 

It  will  be  an  amusing  lark  for  you  to  keep 
house  in  an  apartment,  —  a  nice  little  flat  in 
some  cheap  hotel.  You  have  a  suite  of  rooms 
now  that  is  probably  larger  than  the  whole 
domicile  in  which  you,  and  your  husband,  and 
your  one  servant  will  be  stowed.  It  will  be 
great  fun ;  quite  like  playing  doll's  housekeep- 
ing. When  guests  arrive  and  the  tea-tray  is 
under  the  sofa  in  the  drawing-room,  —  I  hope 
you  have  read  "Cranford"  and  remember 
Mrs.  Forrester,  —  it  will  seem  to  you  most 
amusing  to  have  the  maid  come  in  and  fish  it 
out.  When  you  are  half  dead  for  want  of  sleep 
and  your  cook-parlor-maid-second-girl  has  a 
cough  on  the  other  side  of  a  partition  as  thin 
as  gauze,  when  you  wish  to  dress  in  a  hurry 
for  a  dinner  and  dear  Harry  has  to  be  shaving 


260  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

at  the  one  glass  at  the  same  time  —  No;  I  will 
not  go  into  details  so  minute  and  intimate.  I 
will  content  myself  with  saying  that  each  day 
will  bring  its  own  new  and  exquisite  amuse- 
ment. It  will  be  tremendous  fun  —  for  a 
while. 

I  am  not  sure  how  long  it  will  be  great  fun. 
You  see  I  have  not  the  happiness  of  knowing 
Harry  or  Tom  or  Dick,  or  whatever  his  inef- 
fably charming  and  dear  name  is.  I  am  igno- 
rant, too,  how  fond  you  are  of  him.^  I  cannot 
tell  how  he  is  suited  to  fit  into  the  doll's  house. 
The  humor  of  the  situation  wull  depend  so 
much  upon  what  he  is  like  and  how  well  you 
suit  each  other,  that  I  shall  have  to  be  sure 
dear  Reginald  or  Algernon  or  Christopher  will 
bear  his  part  of  the  game  with  a  tolerable 
grace,  and  with  considerable  persistence,  to  be 
convinced  that  the  second  month  will  be.  as 
droll  as  the  first,  and  the  third  as  attractive 
as  either. 

My  dear  child,  you  have  some  sense  of 
humor,  and  your  father's  set  of  the  poems  of 
Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  if  my  memory  is 
not  at  fault,  is  very  splendidly  bound  in  crim- 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   261 

son  morocco.  Some  rainy  day  when  your 
frock  is  so  becoming  as  to  have  put  you  in  a 
pleasant  frame  of  mind,  when  your  digestion 
is  in  order,  and  the  frock  aforesaid  is  of  a  color 
to  harmonize  with  the  crimson  binding,  get 
out  the  book  and  sit  down  with  it  before  the 
library  fire,  —  I  should  say  on  the  side  where 
the  light  is  best  on  the  Diaz  over  the  mantel. 
When  a  picture  has  cost  $12,000,  it  is  only 
showing  it  proper  respect  to  look  at  it  from  a 
favorable  point;  and  if  you  are  to  marry  a  poor 
man,  you  will  have  fewer  opportunities  for  this 
sort  of  thing  than  you  have  had.  Then  open 
the  volume  and  find  a  poem  called  "  Content- 
ment." 

It  begins :  — 

Little  I  ask;  my  wants  are  few; 

I  only  wish  a  hut  of  stone, 
(A  very  'plain  brown  stone  will  do,) 

That  I  may  call  my  own ;  — 
And  close  at  hand  is  such  a  one. 
In  yonder  street  that  fronts  the  sun. 

The  doctor  lived  in  Beacon  Street,  you  remem- 
ber, and  knew  the  sunny  side  of  Common- 
wealth Avenue  well. 


262   A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

Read  the  whole,  my  dearest  goddaughter. 

I  always  thought  cold  victual  nice ;  — 
My  choice  would  be  vanilla-ice. 

I  own  perhaps  I  might  desire 

Some  shawls  of  true  Cashmere,  — 
Some  marrowy  crapes  of  China  silk, 
Like  wrinkled  skins  on  scalded  milk. 

The  poem  represents,  I  fancy,  a  good  deal 
more  truly  than  you  realize,  the  genuine  atti- 
tude of  your  mind  toward  poverty. 

Marry  your  poor  man,  marry  him,  by  all 
means.  I  will  send  you  a  refrigerator  as  a 
wedding  gift.  You  can  let  me  know  about 
the  size  when  the  flat  is  selected. 

P.  S.  If  you  had  told  me  who  he  is,  I  might 
have  been  more  explicit. 

I  suppose  the  men  at  the  hunt-breakfast 
were  all  rich,  —  or  did  I  hear  that  some  were 
there  who  don't  keep  horses  or  hunt  at  all.? 
It  is  n't  of  any  consequence.  Don't  bother  to 
answer,  or  I  shall  think  you  regard  me  as  a 
regular  gossip. 


XXX 

A  PERSONAL  DISCLAIMER 

Why,  of  course  I  understand  that  you  had  n't 
any  particular  man  in  mind.  You  need  n't 
have  taken  a  special-deHvery  stamp  to  tell  me 
that.  Certainly  you  had  not;  by  no  means; 
never  in  the  world ;  jamais,  jamais,  jamais  !  I 
only  meant  that  if  you  had  had,  and  that  if  you 
had  then  chosen  to  mention  his  name,  or  if  you 
had  taken  some  man  you  know  but  do  not  in 
the  least  care  for,  —  not  the  very  least,  I  mean ; 
never  could  care  for,  or  would  care  for,  you 
know ;  —  taken  him  just  as  a  sort  of  hypothe- 
sis, an  example,  as  it  were,  it  would  have  been 
easier  for  me  to  give  an  exact  opinion.  Now  I 
apologize.  I  hope  that  is  sufficient.  K  it  is  n't, 
you  may  imagine  me  on  my  old  marrow- 
bones, with  outstretched  hands  and  stream- 
ing eyes.  I  trust  this  will  soothe  you,  although 
you  do  seem  to  feel  rather  strongly  about  the 
matter.    Of  course  I  never  made  a  stupider 


264    A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

blunder  than  when  I  hinted  that  there  might 
be  a  particuhir  man  within  a  thousand  miles  of 
your  thought.  Of  course  you  could  n't  have 
had  an  actual  man  in  mind!  Oh,  surely  not, 
by  all  the  gods! 

P.  S.    Who  is  he  ? 


XXXI 

"WHEN  POVERTY  HAS  KISSED  WITH  LOVE" 

My  dear  child,  I  would  n't  have  hurt  you  for 
the  world.  I  am  sorry  that  you  could  n't  take 
in  jest  what  I  meant  so.  I  am  afraid  the  situ- 
ation is  more  serious  than  I  thought.  At  any 
rate,  I  will  be  serious  with  the  solemnity  of  a 
whole  row  of  sphinxes  now.  I  was  in  earnest 
under  my  quizzing  before,  for  I  wanted  to  let 
you  have  a  glimpse  of  the  grave  side  of  the 
question;  but  now,  without  any  joking,  you 
shall  hear  just  what  I  think  about  your  mar- 
rying a  poor  man. 

We  will  assume  that  the  poor  man  is  well- 
educated,  well-bred,  straightforward,  and  has 
a  salary  of  $1800  a  year.  —  If  I  am  to  be  seri- 
ous, I  may  as  well  say  that  I  know  all  about 
Harry  Ashmore,  my  dear,  but  you  will  please 
observe  that  I  pretend  I  don't,  and  that  I  care- 
fully write  of  an  entirely  hypothetical  person! 
—  We  will  assume  that  this  imaginary  poor 


^66  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

man  has  refined  tastes,  no  little  cleverness,  and 
that  it  is  believed  by  his  friends  that  he  viill 
rise;  but  at  twenty-eight  he  has  advanced 
only  to  the  moderate  salary  named.  This  cer- 
tainly may  mean  that  he  is  never  likely  to 
become  a  millionaire,  —  and  indeed  it  means 
that  you  will  do  wisely  to  contemplate  the 
possibility  that  he  may  remain  a  poor  man  all 
his  days. 

Very  well,  my  dear,  let  us  consider. 

You  have  had  very  little  to  do  with  expenses 
of  any  sort,  except  in  the  matter  of  dress,  be- 
cause everything  else  has  been  provided  for 
you.  With  an  economy  on  which  you  pride 
yourself,  and  with  the  aid  of  numerous  gifts  of 
gowns  and  gems,  —  please  notice  the  allitera- 
tion :  I  don't  do  that  often !  —  you  have  man- 
aged to  dress  on  $2000  a  year.  A  very  little 
mental  arithmetic  will  show  you  that  when  out 
of  $1800  has  come  house-rent,  wages  of  ser- 
vants, traveling  expenses,  living  expenses,  and 
the  price  of  at  least  clothing  enough  to  allow 
your  husband  to  appear  among  his  fellow 
men,  there  will  not  be  $2000  left  for  your  rai- 
ment, or,  indeed,  any  very  large  fragment  of 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    267 

that  sum.  You  may  take  this  as  typical  of  the 
whole  problem.  The  question  in  plain  Eng- 
lish is,  do  you  care  enough  for  this  imaginary 
poor  man  to  remodel  your  whole  manner  of 
living,  to  give  up  the  luxuries  which  have  been 
the  ordinary  commonplaces  of  every-day  life, 
- — to  do  all  this,  and  to  like  it.  The  ques- 
tion is  whether  you  can  think  the  love  and 
companionship  of  the  poor  man  a  sufficient 
recompense  for  all  you  must  forego ;  —  a  re- 
compense, too,  that  will  be  permanently  sat- 
isfactory. You  have  to  consider,  not  whether 
poverty  would  be  a  lark  for  a  week  or  a  year, 
but  whether  you  are  willing  deliberately  to  take 
it  up  for  the  rest  of  your  mortal  life.  If  you 
cannot  find  it  in  your  power  to  do  this  gladly, 
if  you  cannot  at  the  bottom  of  your  heart  feel 
that  for  the  sake  of  being  the  wife  of  this  poor 
man  you  are  glad  to  face  the  necessity  of  being 
as  impecunious  as  a  church  mouse  in  Lent  all 
your  days,  then  you  have  no  right  to  think  of 
such  a  marriage  for  a  single  minute. 

I  can  fancy  how  he,  poor  fellow,  has  turned 
the  thing  over  and  over  in  his  mind,  very  likely 
through  long,  sleepless  nights,  inventing  wildly 


268  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

impossible  schemes  for  making  a  fortune,  re- 
proaching himself  for  ever  having  thought  of 
tempting  you  to  give  up  so  much,  and  en- 
deavoring to  make  up  his  mind  never  to  think 
of  you  again.  A  rich  girl  may  give  a  poor  man 
a  great  deal  of  misery  without  knowing  it.    If 
you  ever  should  care  for  a  man  without  a  for- 
tune, my  child,  part  of  the  price  you  must  pay 
Fortune  for  the  good  she  has  bestowed  upon 
you  must  be  the  sorrow  of  knowing  you  pain 
him  every  time  he  thinks  of.  the  differences 
between  you  in  the  way  of  money.    If  he  is  a 
manly  fellow,  he  cannot  help  reflecting  how 
your  life  must  be  altered  if  you  marry  him. 
He  cannot  help  feeling  as  if  he  were  a  selfish 
brute  ever  to  have  thought  of  the  possibility 
of  your  loving  him  and  stepping  down  from 
your  golden  elevation.    If  he  is  sensitive,  he  is 
likely,  moreover,  to  feel  the  humiliation  of  not 
being  able  to  take  the  man's  part  of  shaping 
destiny;   of  not  being  in  a  position  to  bestow 
rather  than  to  deprive. 

If  he  is  worth  anything,  some  such  thoughts 
and  feelings  will  surely  be  in  his  mind,  and 
you  have  no  right  to  be  anything  less  than 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    269 

utterly  honest  with  him.  If  you  answer  his 
doubts  by  consenting  to  marry  him,  you  are 
doing  him  one  of  the  bitterest  wrongs  a  wo- 
man can  do  a  man  if  you  are  not  prepared  to 
bear  poverty,  and  to  bear  it,  moreover,  with 
such  a  gladness  of  love  that  he  shall  never  be 
able  in  your  after  life  to  find  regret  in  your 
heart  for  what  you  have  done.  No  woman, 
alas,  can  tell  what  the  future  may  bring  her, 
and  no  two  human  beings  can  be  sure  that  love 
does  not  blind  their  eyes ;  but  no  true  woman 
has  a  right,  or,  indeed,  has  a  will,  to  involve  the 
man  she  cares  for  in  any  evil  she  can  foresee. 
You  are  bound  to  consider  this  matter  as 
steadily  and  as  cold-bloodedly  as  you  are  able, 
and  to  look  at  the  future  as  calmly  as  you 
possibly  can,  with  a  view  of  discovering  its 
very  darkest  possibilities. 

In  your  case,  you  know  that  your  father 
would  see  that  you  never  really  suffered;  but 
you  know  equally  well  that  his  fortune  has  to 
})rovide  for  the  rest  of  a  rather  large  family. 
You  ought  to  know,  too,  that  the  poor  man 
is  not  of  the  sort  —  the  imaginary  poor  man, 
of  course  —  to  wish  to  be  dependent  on  your 


270  THE  COUNSELS   OF 

father.  You  would  n't  respect  him,  if  he  were. 
Do  not,  I  beg  of  you,  shirk  the  issue  by  sup- 
posing all  sorts  of  pleasant  things  that  might 
happen,  —  legacies  from  imaginary  aunts  and 
impossible  uncles,  and  fortunes  that  might 
descend  from  the  clouds.  Face  the  situation 
squarely.  Do  you  care  enough  for  him  to  be 
willing  to  be  poor,  really  poor,  really  to  go 
without  things  you  have  had  as  a  matter  of 
course  all  your  life,  willing  to  hear  your  ac- 
quaintances talk  of  the  opera  and  not  be  able 
to  afford  to  go,  willing  to  cramp  and  worry 
and  save,  willing  to  make  over  old  gowns  until 
you  hate  the  sight  of  them,  and  after  all  to  be 
a  little  out  of  style,  willing  to  do  all  these 
things,  and  to  smile  at  them,  for  the  sake  of 
doing  it  for  him  and  with  him  ? 

That  is  the  question,  my  child,  and  the 
frankness  with  which  you  look  at  it  is  the 
measure  of  your  honesty  as  a  woman.  If  you 
are  not  willing  to  face  it,  God  protect  any 
good  man  from  ever  falling  in  love  with  you ! 
It  is  probably  the  most  momentous  question 
you  will  be  called  upon  to  answer  in  your 
entire  life.     You  must  give  him  your  whole 


A  WORLDLY    GODMOTHER    271 

heart,  including  the  cheerful  sacrifice  of  your 
enjoyment  in  pleasant,  costly  things,  or  you 
must  let  him  go  his  way.  You  may  regret  los- 
ing him,  but  you  are  a  fool  to  wreck  your  life 
through  a  want  of  courage  to  look  at  what  is 
plainly  in  your  sight.  You  had  far  better  than 
to  be  half-hearted  in  this  business  be  like  the 
sensible  if  cold-hearted  damsel  in  "Mother 
oose :     — 

The  little  maid  replied, 
(Some  say  a  little  sighed) : 
"  But  what  shall  we  have  for  to  eat,  eat,  eat  ? 

Will  the  love  that  you  're  so  rich  in 

Make  a  fire  in  the  kitchen. 
Or  the  little  God  of  Love  turn  the  spit,  spit,  spit?  " 

Leave  the  poor  man,  and  make  your  heart  as 
cold  as  a  dog's  nose,  if  you  cannot  take  him 
with  a  love  so  absolute  that  poverty  is  nothing. 
It  is  no  use,  my  dear.  That  blotch  is  a  silly 
tear.  I  tried  to  carry  it  off  by  being  funny,  but 
that  wrinkled  spot  spoils  everything.  The 
matter  is  too  solemn  for  me.  If  you  only  love 
him  a  little  and  yourself  more,  at  least  be  kind 
to  him  and  to  yourself  by  sending  him  away. 
It  would  only  bring  misery  to  marry  him.  You 


272    A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

would  have  a  more  or  less  delightful  honey- 
moon, and  a  miserable  existence  all  the  rest 
of  your  days.  You  don't  marry  for  the  first 
month,  but  for  all  the  long  years  that  come 
after;  for  the  years  when  you  are  past  your 
first  passion,  past  the  power  of  finding  fun  in 
inconveniences  that  amuse  youthful  happi- 
ness, but  which  are  gravel  in  the  shoes  of  age; 
you  marry  for  the  times  of  sickness  and  anx- 
iety, the  years  of  the  bringing  up  of  children, 
and  you  marry  for  the  autumn  of  life.  Think 
of  this,  and  be  honest  with  yourself.  If  you 
have  a  doubt,  tell  him  to  go  —  for  his  own 
sake. 


XXXII 

"JOY  IS  FOR  THOSE  WHO  DARE" 

I  HAD  faith  in  you!  I  knew  you  would!  My 
dear  godchild,  I  wish  I  could  hug  you !  I  am 
sure  you  would  n't  be  engaged  to  him  unless 
you  really  meant  it,  and  meant  it  in  a  way  per- 
fectly serious.  I  am  so  glad  you  are  capable  of 
loving  a  man  so  that  you  can  make  sacrifices 
for  his  sake. 

And  I  am  glad  for  your  own  sake.  You  will 
find  that  this  is  the  only  thing  that  really  pays. 
You  will  get  a  thousand  times  more  out  of 
married  life  than  is  possible  where  people  are 
swamped  in  money.  You  two  will  plan  things 
together,  do  things  together,  go  without  things 
together.  You  cannot  help  being  drawn  into  a 
companionship  that  must  be  so  close  as  to  be 
one  of  the  most  delightful  things  in  the  world. 
It  is  when  husband  and  wife  go  separate  and 
independent  ways  that  they  tire  of  each  other. 
The  friendliness  of  contriving  together  how  to 


274  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

make  a  narrow  income  cover  wide  needs  is 
not  only  deliglitfid  in  itself,  but  it  is  the  most 
effective  preservative  of  affection  that  has  ever 
been  found.  I  know  there  are  rich  people  that 
love  each  other  devotedly  ;  but  I  am  afraid 
there  are  not  too  many  of  them,  and  I  am 
equally  sure  that  even  they  miss  a  great  deal 
of  pleasure  in  what  I  may  call  the  intimacies 
of  poverty. 

I  can  hardly  help  smiling  to  find  myself 
writing  in  this  enthusiastic  fashion  in  praise 
of  poverty,  for  I  know  how  beastly  annoying 
it  is.  All  the  earlier  years  of  my  married  life 
Sherman  and  I  were  poorer  than  a  squirrel  in 
the  spring.  We  had  to  take  every  individual 
penny,  and  turn  it  over,  and  examine  it  under 
a  microscope,  and  keep  it  over  night  for  the 
support  it  gave  our  courage,  and  then  get  it 
changed  into  mills  so  we  coidd  spend  it  a  little 
at  a  time.  I  literally  used  to  go  about  with 
folded  paper  in  my  purse  when  I  had  shop- 
ping to  do,  so  that  it  would  n't  look  so  dis- 
gracefully thin !  But,  my  child,  the  fun  we  had 
in  those  days  contriving  how  to  squeeze  out 
money  enough  to  go  to  the  theatre  or  to  have 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   275 

some  innocent  little  dissipation  makes  me 
sigh  in  envy  of  the  poor!  Now,  we  order  the 
carriage  and  go  to  the  opera,  if  we  think  we 
shan't  be  too  much  bored,  and  I  am  sure  we 
both  had  a  hundred  and  a  thousand  times 
more  fun  when  we  debated  whether  we  should 
walk  there,  and  brave  all  our  fashionable 
friends  and  rich  relatives  in  the  lobby  on  our 
way  to  the  second  balcony.  Charles  Lamb 
has  said  all  this  a  thousand  tinies  better  than 
I  can;  but  oh,  my  dear,  I  wish  I  were  young, 
and  married  to  a  poor  young  man  with  no 
especial  prospects,  that  I  was  over  head  and 
ears  in  love  with,  and  who  was  named  Sher- 
man! 

It  is  time  for  me  to  stop  writing,  for  I  am 
merging  toward  extravagancies,  and  of  course 
I  ought  to  tell  you  you  made  a  frightful  mis- 
take in  not  taking  that  old  millionaire  with 
the  bad  temper  who  has  been  at  your  feet  all 
winter.  At  least  I  ought  to  point  out  that  there 
were  plenty  of  desirable  fellows  you  might 
have  had  who  have  quantities  of  money :  but 
somehow  I  can  only  be  glad  you  have  chosen 
as  you  have.    I  do  so  dearly  hope  you  will  be 


276   A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

happy,  and  I  believe  to  the  bottom  of  my  heart 
that  you  deserve  to  be. 

When  I  send  you  that  refrigerator  for  your 
flat,  it  will  be  full  of  blessings,  —  and  not  cold 
ones,  either. 


XXXIII 

A  COUNSEL  ANENT  HUSBANDS 

You  do  not  ask  me  how  you  shall  treat  your 
husband  after  you  get  him,  but  I  shall  feel  my 
duty  to  be  incomplete  if  I  don't  offer  you  some 
good  advice  on  that  subject.  I  am  sure  how  to 
treat  a  husband  is  far  more  important  than 
golf  or  bridge,  but  not  half  so  much  instruc- 
tion is  given  on  the  subject. 

The  first  year  of  your  married  life  will  be 
a  hard  one.  It  would  be  an  impossible  one  if 
love  did  n't  come  in  as  a  lubricator.  That  first 
year  has  wrecked  many  a  promising  marriage 
that  might  have  gone  on  smoothly  if  the  first 
twelve  months  could  have  been  got  over  pro- 
perly. It  is  the  time  when  you  and  he  are  try- 
ing to  learn  how  to  run  in  unison.  With  all  the 
good-will  in  the  world,  adjustment  is  not  easy. 
It  will  be  easier  for  you  than  for  him  in  some 
ways,  for  in  the  first  place  you  are  nine  years 
younger,  and  in  the  second  place  he  is  a  man. 


278  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

Always  remember  that  it  is  more  easy  for 
a  man  to  give  way  in  big  things  than  in  httle 
ones.  He  may  be  argued  with  about  an  impor- 
tant decision,  and  when  he  is  convinced,  he  is 
of  course  —  if  he  is  a  gentleman  —  ready  to 
make  the  sacrifice  or  the  concession.  In  the 
little  things  he  would  never  remember,  and 
even  if  he  would,  it  is  not  possible  to  argue 
them  out.  A  woman  sees  the  point  in  trifles; 
she  knows  how  important  they  are,  and  be- 
sides, she  remembers.  She  understands,  as  a 
man  never  seems  to  be  able  to  understand, 
how  like  a  grain  of  sand  in  the  bearing  of  a 
watch  may  be  some  little  thing  that  a  man 
never  would  feel  and  never  would  see.  Just 
make  up  your  mind  to  ignore  his  carelessness 
in  little  matters,  to  endure  his  forgetting,  and 
not  to  lay  it  to  heart  when  he  does  over  and 
over  some  trifling  trick  that  he  has  known  is 
not  pleasant  to  you,  and  that  you  think  he 
ought  to  remember.  Julia  Calumet  really 
wrecked  her  whole  life  because  her  husband 
would  put  his  cigarette  ashes  on  the  rugs.  He 
had  always  done  it,  and  he  could  n't  in  the 
least  see  why  he  should  n't.    He  could  n't  or 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    270 

would  n't  appreciate  how  it  teased  her,  —  she 
was  a  creature  of  habit  and  nerves  anyway,  — 
and  she  fretted,  and  fussed,  and  made  herself 
ill  over  what  was  really  of  no  importance.  She 
said  that  if  he  cared  for  her  comfort,  he  would 
appreciate  how  she  felt  about  it,  —  he  might 
have,  if  he  had  been  a  woman.  Their  whole 
married  life  went  to  pieces  because  she  was  a 
fool  about  that  silly  thing.  Never  be  such  a 
dunce  as  to  think  that  your  husband's  forget- 
fulness  means  that  he  does  n't  care  for  you. 
He  must  to  the  end  of  his  life  be  simply  a  man, 
and  he  will  never  be  able  to  comprehend  that 
you  mind  or  why  you  mind.  In  nine  cases  out 
of  ten  he  will  be  utterly  oblivious  that  you  have 
ever  shown  that  you  cared,  —  and  he  will  be 
devoted  to  you  all  the  time! 

In  little  things  men  are  certainly  more  self- 
ish than  women,  or  at  least  they  seem  so. 
Perhaps  it  is  that  they  never  are  conscious  that 
the  comfort  of  life  depends  on  little  things. 
They  are  bred  to  have  somebody  managing 
and  looking  out  for  their  ease  in  the  hundred 
trifles  of  domestic  life,  and  very  likely  the  sense 
of  proper  perception  has  through  generations 


280  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

become  atrophied  and  obsolete.  Trifles  are 
what  chiefly  make  up  the  happiness  of  a 
woman,  and  by  some  inscrutable  law  of  Pro- 
vidence, not  one  man  is  born  in  a  thousand 
that  has  any  perception  of  such  a  thing.  Your 
future  comfort  will  depend  greatly  on  your 
hardening  your  heart  so  as  not  to  care,  or  at 
least  on  your  refusing  ever  to  see  anything  in 
the  neglect  of  your  taste  in  little  things  except 
inevitable  masculine  perversity  bestowed  on 
man  by  Heaven  for  the  discipline  of  woman. 
Break  your  husband  of  little  ways  that  annoy 
you,  if  you  can  pleasantly  and  peaceably;  but 
for  the  love  of  all  that  is  good,  bear  no  malice 
if  you  cannot! 

Another  thing  which  is  of  great  importance 
is  that  you  should  keep  him  up  in  little  cour- 
tesies. A  man  respects  a  \voman  who  is  pro- 
perly exacting,  although  he  may  grumble  a 
little.  I  tell  Sherman  that  I  have  too  much 
regard  for  him  ever  to  allow  his  wife  to  be 
treated  with  any  slighting  of  courtesy,  even  by 
her  husband.  If  you  put  yourself  into  the  atti- 
tude of  a  slave  or  an  inferior  being,  there  is 
not  a  man  alive  that  will  not  accept  it,  —  or 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    281 

if  there  is,  I  have  never  seen  him.  I  have 
encountered  some  meek  men,  but  never  one 
who  would  not  allow  his  wife,  if  she  would,  to 
assume  the  position  of  a  mere  cipher  to  him  as 
the  significant  figure.  Be  a  little  exacting,  my 
dear,  even  at  the  cost  of  a  bit  of  self-sacrifice, 
for  in  no  other  way  can  you  keep  the  esteem 
of  your  husband  from  insensibly  lessening  by 
fine  shades  and  degrees. 

I  may  seem  to  be  writing  as  if  I  pretended 
to  be  a  philosopher,  but  I  am  writing  what  I 
know.  Some  men  are  brutes,  and  nothing  can 
be  done  with  them  anyway ;  but  with  a  decent 
fellow,  a  very  pleasant  permanent  fashion  of 
living  may  be  established  simply  by  keeping 
quietly  before  his  mind  the  fact  that  he 
has  married  a  woman  worthy  of  considera- 
tion. The  truth  is  that  we  women  all  have  an 
instinct,  or  an  inherited  tendency,  or  some  in- 
fernal quality,  in  virtue  of  which  we  have  the 
impulse  when  once  we  are  married  either  to 
rebel  entirely  from  all  control,  —  which  natu- 
rally is  not  the  case  if  we  love  our  husbands,  — 
or  to  become  abject  slaves.  In  these  enlightened 
and  emancipated  days  this  tendency  is  greatly 


282  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

modified,  but  it  does  show  itself  in  most 
marriages  by  the  wife's  letting  her  husband 
treat  her  as  if  she  were  a  mere  comrade.  If  a 
woman  allows  her  husband  to  bear  himself 
toward  her  with  a  careless  indifference  to  cour- 
tesy, he  is  sure  to  come  to  feel  toward  her 
a  careless  indifference  of  regard.  —  That  is 
sound  wisdom !  If  you  care  for  your  husband, 
make  him  treat  you  with  respect,  so  that  he 
may  not  come  to  value  less  what  is  or  should 
be  his  most  precious  possession,  the  wife  of  his 
bosom. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  sacrifice  you  will  be 
called  upon  to  make  to  domestic  peace  will  be 
to  forego  the  pleasure  of  speaking  when  events 
show  that  your  advice,  slighted  beforehand, 
was  really  the  wisest  of  counsel.  If  you  ever 
find  yourself  saying  triumphantly  to  your  hus- 
band, "What  did  I  say.?  Did  n't  I  tell  you 
so  .'^"  go  at  once  and  have  your  tongue  ampu- 
tated! Don't  run  the  risk  of  being  unable  to 
resist  the  temptation  of  saying  it  again;  for  a 
repetition  of  that  doom-dealing  speech  is  mare 
than  the  most  ardent  masculine  affection  can 
survive.    If  you  will  only  be  quiet,  the  fair- 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   283 

mindedness  of  the  man  will  generally  prompt 
him  to  say  it  himself,  and  then  you  have  all 
the  glory  without  having  robbed  him  of  the 
sense  of  magnanimity  which  makes  him  able 
to  bear  the  humiliation  of  being  convicted  in 
error.  If  he  does  not  speak,  you  at  least  have 
avoided  the  nothing-less-than-f atal  mistake  of 
taunting  him  with  having  been  wrong  in  his 
opinion  and  having  failed  to  recognize  your 
cleverness. 

"I  told  you  so"  is  absolutely  the  death- 
knell  of  marital  happiness! 


XXXIV 

"TO   MARRIAGE  ALL  THE  STORIES  FLOW" 

It  is  odd  how  things  come  to  you  the  moment 
you  are  interested  in  a  particular  subject. 
Just  after  I  sent  off  my  last  epistle  I  came  on 
this  quotation  from  Dean  Swift :  — 

"The  reason  why  so  many  marriages  are 
unhappy  is  because  young  ladies  spend  their 
time  in  making  nets,  not  in  making  cages." 

The  whole  philosophy  of  marriage  is  here 
in  a  nutshell,  and  you  will  do  well  to  get  the 
quotation  by  heart,  and  lay  it  up  for  future 
meditation  and  use. 

I  have  never  been  able  to  make  up  my  mind 
why  it  is  so  hard  —  I  might  say  so  impossible, 
without  being  far  wrong  —  to  make  girls  real- 
ize that  a  man  has  to  be  won  over  and  over 
again.  I  don't  mean  that  an  attractive  woman 
may  not  without  much  bother  keep  a  husband 
in  an  attitude  reasonably  satisfactory.  Most 
marriages  that  do  not  come  to  grief  are  likely 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   285 

to  be  of  the  neutral  sort:  arrangements  ac- 
cepted in  a  sort  of  cool,  business-like  reason- 
ableness on  both  sides;  endured  as  necessary 
evils  at  worst,  and  at  the  best  acquiesced  in  as 
a  practical  and  common-sense  modus  vivendi. 
Wives  are  not  often,  I  suppose,  really  content 
with  an  indifferent  husband,  but  they  seem 
without  much  difficulty  to  assume  that  a  man 
who  has  once  been  in  love  with  them  is  in  duty 
bound  to  remain  in  love  perpetually.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  a  man  does  not,  and  he  will  not. 
If  a  man  is  in  love  with  his  wife  at  any  time 
after  the  first  six  months  of  married  life,  it  is 
because  she  has  made  him  fall  in  love  with  her 
over  and  over  again.  She  has  at  least  used, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  especial  art  to 
retain  his  affection. 

When  you  have  a  husband,  keep  two  things 
in  mind,  and  school  yourself  not  to  fret  over 
them,  but  to  accept  them  as  part  of  the  inflex- 
ible law  of  nature:  First,  that  any  man,  even 
a  lover,  is  still  human;  second,  that  it  is  the 
normal  nature  of  a  man's  love  to  burn  out 
rather  quickly.  The  moment  a  woman  falls  in 
love,  she  is  sure  to  feel  that  her  hero  is  above 


280  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

all  the  weaknesses  that  belong  to  the  rest  of 
humanity,  and  that  his  fidelity  to  her  will 
remain  unshaken  and  undiminished  to  the  end 
of  time.  Absolute  nonsense,  my  dear!  He 
thinks  the  same  about  you,  for  the  time  being; 
but  you  know  it  is  n't  true,  however  much  you 
wish  that  for  his  sake  it  might  be.  He  will  only 
have  to  see  you  at  breakfast  a  sufficient  num- 
ber of  times,  perhaps  with  a  headache  and  a 
doubtful  temper,  to  discover  that  you  are  not  * 
entirely  an  angel  yet.  He  may,  and  I  hope  he 
will,  find  you  something  much  better  adapted 
to  daily  life;  but  you  must  be  prepared  for  the 
day  of  mutual  disenchantment.  You  must  be 
ready  when  it  comes  to  do  your  part  toward 
the  reestablishing  of  relations  on  a  new  basis, 
which  may  be  more  enduring  than  anything 
you  could  expect  to  find  while  you  mooned 
about  in  that  heavenly  idiocy  of  regarding 
each  other  as  superhuman.  The  delusions  of 
the  honeymoon  are  enchanting,  but,  like  other 
enchantments,  they  are  fugitive.  They  are  like 
other  flames,  —  to  change  the  figure,  —  and 
cannot  burn  without  consuming  something. 
If  you  wish  the  fire  to  keep  up,  you  must  j)ro- 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   287 

vide  fresh  fuel.  The  pity  of  it  is  that  when  they 
begin  to  fail,  we  are  so  apt  to  give  ourselves  up 
to  wailing  and  weeping,  or  to  protesting  that 
the  man  we  trusted  has  promised  to  see  to  it 
that  the  bonfire  never  grew  less.  Don't  waste 
any  time  or  strength  in  that  sort  of  foolishness, 
when  the  fire  of  love  seems  to  pale  a  little,  but 
scrabble  around,  and  see  what  you  can  find 
that  will  burn ! 

Since  even  a  husband,  then,  is  human,  it  is 
well  to  reckon  with  him  as  a  man.  The  two 
strongest  characteristics  of  the  male  animal  — 
human,  at  least  —  are  evidently  vanity  and 
the  love  of  comfort.  Sherman  is  rather  an  ex- 
ceptional creature,  or  at  least  I  think  so,  but 
even  Sherman  is  not  perfect  when  he  is  hun- 
gry. Men  in  general  are  pretty  much  alike, 
and  no  woman  can  reasonably  hope  to  hold 
permanently  the  love  of  a  husband  unless  she 
contrive  in  some  way  to  feed  him  well  and  to 
flatter  his  vanity.  I  know  you  will  think  of  the 
women  who  hold  men  by  snubbing  them,  but 
the  truth  is  that  vanity  is  the  chief  motive 
there.  Men  find  themselves  piqued  by  diffi- 
culty, and  their  vanity  incites  them  on.  There 


288  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

are  some  rag-doll  little  men  who  kiss  humbly 
the  hand  that  smites  them,  and  "adore  the 
wife  that  rules ; "  but  they  are  not  to  be  counted 
as  real  men.  The  husband  who  is  treated  with 
contempt,  and  who  allows  himself  to  be  hen- 
pecked, must  always  be  the  weak  sort  of  thing 
that  he  deserves  to  be.  Any  woman  despises  a 
husband  that  has  n't  character  enough  to  be 
her  master,  —  unless  she  takes  the  maternal 
attitude,  and  pities  him;  but  when  the  wife 
loves  her  husband  as  a  mother,  the  husband 
seldom  loves  the  wife  at  all.  He  lets  her  take 
care  of  him,  and  he  loves  himself.  One  of  a 
married  couple  must  be  the  head  of  tlie  house, 
and  any  woman  of  any  spirit  will  take  that 
place  if  she  can  get  it ;  —  but  she  has  nothing 
but  contempt  for  the  husband  that  allows  her 
such  a  victory. 

A  woman  may  manage  her  husband,  and 
every  good  wife  will  manage  him  when  the 
proper  occasion  arises,  but  to  manage  a  man 
does  not  necessarily  lessen  respect  for  him. 
It  is  part  of  the  natural  order  of  life  that 
feminine  finesse  should  in  delicate  situations 
prove  more  effective  than   masculine  force; 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   289 

and  every  woman  understands  this;  but  woe 
and  the  abomination  of  desolation  to  the  hus- 
band that  once  allows  his  wife  to  bully  him. 
Love  goes  out  of  the  window,  or  up  the  chim- 
ney, or  through  the  keyhole,  or  whatever  way 
of  escaping  is  most  speedy,  and  never  returns. 
A  man's  vanity  is  the  legitimate  care  of  any 
worthy  and  loving  wife.  She  will  appeal  to  it 
when  wisdom  demands ;  she  will  take  care  not 
to  foster  it  inordinately ;  she  will  recognize 
that  nature  beneficently  endowed  man  with 
this  weakness,  that  woman  should  have  a 
means  of  leading  him  for  his  own  good.  She 
will,  if  she  is  all  that  a  wife  should  be,  gently 
snub  him  whenever  she  sees  signs  that  his 
self-esteem  is  developing  in  lines  which  would 
tend  to  make  him  independent  of  her  or  too 
susceptible  to  the  influence  of  others.  A  per- 
fect wife  will  understand,  in  short,  that  Heaven 
has  made  her  the  guardian  of  her  husband's 
welfare,  and  that  the  lever  by  which  she  is  to 
control  his  character  and  his  acts  is  his  vanity. 
She  will  recognize  the  gravity  of  the  trust,  and 
she  will  treat  the  lever  with  delicacy  and  dis- 
cretion accordingly. 


290  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

.  All  this  wisdom  you  will  resent  just  now,  I 
suppose;  in  your  present  phase  of  affection 
you  will  rage  at  the  idea  that  you  could  flatter 
the  perfect  man  who  has  fallen  to  your  lot 
through  the  especial  grace  of  Heaven.  So  be  it, 
my  dear.  Consider  what  I  have  said  as  apply- 
ing only  to  every  other  wife  on  earth  except 
yourself.  It  will  help  you  to  appreciate  the 
position  of  your  sisters,  and  if  the  time  should 
ever  come  when  you  have  to  advise  with  any 
wife  —  having  no  need,  of  course,  to  resort  to 
such  measures  yourself  —  how  to  turn  aside 
a  husband  bent  with  masculine,  well-meaning 
wrong-headedness  upon  going  in  a  direction 
that  means  harm  to  him,  you  may  find  a  hint 
in  what  I  have  been  saying.  You  may  tell  her 
that  for  his  own  good  she  may  wisely  praise 
his  good  points,  she  may  show  him  what  a 
profound  admiration  she  has  for  his  good 
sense,  and  how  sure  she  is  he  will  make  the 
wisest  choice,  and  so  forth  and  so  on,  until  she 
is  able  to  lead  him  in  the  right  direction  by 
suggestion  and  praise. 

As  for  yourself,  my  dear  child,   after  the 
first  golden  glow  of  the  honeymoon  has  begun 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   291 

to  dazzle  your  eyes  a  little  less  than  at  first, 
so  that  you  perceive  dimly  that  there  are 
things  in  your  husband  that  you  would  pos- 
sibly have  otherwise,  give  the  whole  force  of 
your  mind  to  thinking  up  the  things  you  can 
and  should  praise.  I  do  not  know  by  what 
good  fortune  it  was  that  my  mother  gave  me 
the  advice  she  did  when  I  was  married;  but 
she  insisted  most  on  this  point:  "Whenever 
you  think  of  something  to  find  fault  with, 
don't  rest  until  you  have  thought  of  something 
you  admire  in  your  husband  just  as  strongly, 
and  have  told  him  so."  Sherman  is  such  a 
trump —  But  you'll  hate  Sherman,  if  I  say  a 
word  more  about  him. 

O  you  dear  thing!  You  will  never  know 
what  fun  it  is  to  give  advice  like  this.  You 
won't  take  much  of  it,  but  I  know  it  is  good, 
and  some  little  bits  of  it  will  stick  to  you,  and 
very  likely  will  be  of  use  some  time;  but  the 
chief  fun  is  to  work  out  in  my  own  mind  how 
it  is  that  I  have  made  so  great  a  success  of 
married  life.  That  sounds  conceited,  and  I 
am  not  trying  to  take  too  much  credit,  or  to 
lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  Providence  has  been 


292    A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER 

so  good  to  me;  but  I  have  made  a  success  of 
married  life;  I  know  I  have;  and  it  gives  me  a 
glow  to  feel  that  what  I  have  done  has  been 
good.  So  be  as  patient  with  my  dissertations 
on  matrimony  as  you  can  be,  and  get  as  much 
good  out  of  them  as  possible. 

One  thing  I  want  to  add  in  conclusion.  It 
would  be  foolish  to  show  my  letters  to  your 
fiance.  He  is  only  a  man,  and  he  would  pooh- 
pooh  them,  and  prove  that  they  are  wrong, 
and  foolish,  and  cold-blooded,  and  you  would 
at  least  wish  to  believe  him ;  but  they  really  are 
right,  and  sensible,  and  oh,  so  wise!  Besides 
which,  they  are  fairly  maudlin  with  soft- 
heartedness ! 


XXXV 

"A  COUNSEL  OF  PERFECTION" 

This  is  the  last,  my  dear;  positively  the  last. 
I  will  even  promise  when  I  see  you  next  w^eek 
to  go  through  all  the  wedding  as  if  I  were  the 
most  frivolous  creature  alive.  I  won't  bore  you 
with  the  very  least  bit  of  advice.  Somehow  in 
my  last  letter,  however,  I  got  off  the  track,  and 
of  course  I  have  to  finish  what  I  started  to  say. 
I  meant  to  say  something  of  the  way  in  which 
a  wife  is  to  make  what  Dean  Swift — crabbed 
old  cynic !  —  would  call  a  cage ;  in  other 
words,  a  home. 

Some  time,  I  think,  I  shall  have  to  write 
a  book  on  husband-breaking  and  husband- 
keeping,  and  when  I  do,  I  shall  divide  the 
means  of  managing  a  husband  into  three 
principal  divisions :  Making  a  Man  Comfort- 
able; Being  Honest;  Amusing  a  Man.  Other 
heads  might  easily  be  thought  of,  but  these 
seem  to  me  to  cover  the  ground  with  sufficient 


294  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

completeness.  If  these  three  are  properly  ob- 
served, the  marriage  is  sure  to  be  happy. 

For  the  sake  of  seeming  thorough  and  sys- 
tematic in  my  manual,  I  shall  divide  into 
sub-heads.  I  shall  put  under  comfort,  for  in- 
stance, Food;  Peace;  and  Little  Ways.  Then 
I  shall  discourse  wisely,  persuasively,  inspir- 
ingly,  under  each  topic.  I  spare  you  most  of 
the  book,  but  as  it  may  never  be  written,  I 
cannot  let  you  off  entirely.  My  conscience 
would  reproach  me  too  much  for  having  de- 
prived you  of  so  much  esoteric  knowledge  on 
matrimony. 

Girls  never  realize  the  importance  to  the 
masculine  animal  of  feeding.  Many  a  girl 
have  I  known  to  lose  excellent  chances  be- 
cause at  parties  she  foolishly  made  the  man 
feed  her  instead  of  collecting  provender  for 
himself.  One  of  the  most  useful  social  lessons 
I  ever  had  was  from  an  old  lady  who  told  me, 
when  I  was  a  young  girl,  to  learn  to  go  hungry 
rather  than  to  have  my  partner  remain  un- 
gorged.  I  learned  after  very  little  experience 
that  the  surest  way  to  be  popular  was  to  say 
to  my  escort  at  any  party  where  supper  had  to 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   295 

be  skirmished  for  by  the  men:  "Oh,  I'm  not 
hungry.  Get  me  a  sandwich,  or  anything,  and 
then  look  after  something  for  yourself."  I 
have  gone  hungry  many  a  time,  and  more  than 
once  my  inward  cravings  have  been  made 
worse  by  a  distant  view  of  my  partner  solacing 
his  soul  on  all  the  delicacies  of  the  season, 
while  I  scantily  nourished  myself  on  a  dry  and 
meagre  sandwich;  but  it  paid.  I  never  lacked 
for  a  supper  partner,  no  matter  how  scarce 
men  were.  The  boys  told  each  other  that  I 
gave  a  fellow  a  chance  to  get  things  to  eat,  so 
there  was  some  fun  taking  me  out  to  supper. 
Such  is  masculine  frailty,  my  dear;  and  wise 
is  the  woman  who  knows  it,  and  takes  account 
of  it. 

The  importance  of  feeding  a  husband  well 
has  been  dwelt  upon  by  many  an  inspired 
writer,  and  the  fresh  and  profound  remarks 
with  which  I  shall  in  my  book  on  husband- 
taming  illuminate  the  well-worn  theme,  I 
shall  not  set  down  here.  It  is  enough  for  me 
to  urge  you  to  remember  that  the  old  saying 
about  the  way  to  a  man's  heart  being  through 
his  stomach  is  practically  true,  —  except  in 


296  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

the  numerous  cases  where  a  man's  heart  is  in 
his  stomach,  so  that  the  road  ends  there.  All 
other  virtues,  moreover,  will  in  a  man  endure 
fasting  better  than  love.  In  the  masculine 
calendar  of  affection  is  no  provision  for  a 
Lent! 

Under  the  sub-head  of  Peace  I  shall  dis- 
course upon  the  restiveness  of  men  under  any 
form  of  feminine  persistence,  and  the  entire 
revolt  of  any  husband  under  pressure  of  fem- 
inine nagging.  A  nagging  wife  is  the  most  in- 
genious torment  ever  invented  by  the  Fiend, 
and  I  have  many  a  time  wondered  at  the 
patience  with  which  men  endure  wives  that 
nag  away  at  them  like  gad-flies.  The  women 
who  read  my  book  will  not  belong  to  that 
detestable  class,  but  they  may  need  to  have 
their  attention  called  to  the  fact  that  often  a 
wife  should  hold  her  tongue  when  she  has  a 
perfectly  logical  right  to  s})eak.  She  is  to  recog- 
nize that  her  speaking  may  simply  irritate  her 
spouse,  and  in  that  case  can  do  no  possible 
good.  Men  are  constantly  saying  that  women 
are  not  logical,  but  no  logic  can  make  a  man 
see  that  a  reminder  to  him  of  having  loft  a  duty 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    297 

undone  is  justifiable.  A  conscientious  wife  is 
apt  to  be  so  possessed  with  the  idea  of  duty 
as  constantly  to  be  in  danger  of  lessening  her 
influence  and  alienating  her  husband  by  in- 
sisting upon  giving  good  advice  unseasonably. 
Never  urge  any  course  on  your  husband  unless 
you  have  a  fair  reason  to  suppose  you  can 
effect  some  good.  To  remonstrate  with  a  man 
for  the  sake  of  freeing  yourself  from  a  sense  of 
responsibility,  or,  what  is  far  more  common 
and  far  worse,  to  relieve  your  exasperation  at 
his  shortcomings,  is  at  once  the  height  of  self- 
ishness and  of  stupidity. 

Wives  are,  as  a  body,  wonderfully  generous 
in  sparing  their  husbands  worry  over  the 
details  of  domestic  life.  I  have  known  hosts 
of  women,  teased  and  perplexed  over  difficul- 
ties in  home  affairs,  who  have  shown  their 
husbands  only  a  smiling  face,  and  hidden  all 
annoyance.  It  is  hardly  just,  perhaps,  that 
women  should  have  to  bear  so  many  of  their 
burdens  alone;  but  it  is  to  be  remembered 
that  the  men  have  their  own  bothers  that  we 
could  n't  understand  enough  to  be  any  help 
in.     The  inevitable  feminine  desire  to  talk 


298  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

about  our  troubles,  and  to  be  pitied  —  to 
make  somebody  else  uncomfortable  because 
we  are  perplexed  and  tired  —  is  pure  selfish- 
ness and  petty  weakness.  I've  done  it,  I  am 
ashamed  to  confess;  but  I've  been  so  humili- 
ated afterward  that  I  decided  that  it  did  not 
pay. 

The  importance  of  the  Little  Ways  of  men 
has  never  been  properly  appreciated  as  an 
element  in  matrimonial  comfort.  Sherman 
has  a  whim  —  he  could  n't  tell  you  why  —  to 
have  the  articles  on  his  dressing-table  stand 
in  certain  positions.  No  servant  that  ever  lived 
can  be  trusted  to  see  to  a  detail  like  that. 
Every  morning  of  my  life,  after  the  maid  has 
done  his  room,  I  go  in  and  set  things  as  he 
likes  them.  Men  have  as  many  freaks  and 
whims  as  women,  only  they  do  not  fuss  about 
them  so  much.  They  are  apt,  too,  to  be  more 
tenacious  in  their  tastes  than  we  are;  and  if  a 
wife  once  knows  her  husband's  little  ways,  she 
seldom  has  to  learn  an  entirely  new  set,  as 
sometimes  happens  on  the  other  side  of  the 
house.  Men  are  as  pleased  and  soothed  by 
having  their  little  tastes  gratified  as  a  cat  is 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    299 

by  being  stroked.  Often  the  men  are  so  fun- 
nily dull  that  they  hardly  know  they  have 
any  preference,  and  still  less  do  they  notice 
that  trouble  has  been  taken  to  gratify  it;  but 
they  unconsciously  get  to  be  comfortable  and 
pleased,  and  in  the  end  nothing  ministers  more 
to  their  good-nature,  or  more  tends  to  make 
them  feel  that  somehow  their  home  is  about 
the  best  place  there  is. 

I  must  warn  you,  as  emphatically  as  I  can, 
that  it  is  entirely  idle  for  a  wife  to  expect  a  hus- 
band to  appreciate  her  trouble,  or  her  thought, 
or  her  skill,  in  looking  after  all  the  trifling 
details  of  his  existence.  She  must  be  content 
with  results,  and  if  she  look  for  definite 
gratitude,  she  spoils  all.  You  stroke  a  cat,  and 
the  beast  purrs;  you  stroke  a  man,  and  he 
simply  becomes  amiable  and  easy  to  live  with. 
It  would  never  occur  to  him  to  make  any 
expression  of  gratitude  so  definite  as  a  purr. 

It  should  be  one  of  the  first  concerns  of  a 
bride  carefully  to  study  what  her  husband 
likes.  She  is  not  to  ask  him,  for  in  the  first 
place  he  would  disclaim  having  any  particular 
little  fancies,  and  in  the  second  he  is  very  sel- 


300  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

dom  able  to  tell  if  he  would.  Men  are  n't 
clever  about  themselves,  and  the  woman  must 
use  her  wut  to  find  out  things  for  herself.  This 
need  of  studying  a  husband  is  constantly 
preached;  but  is  generally  meant  to  apply 
to  matters  of  obvious  weight.  The  real  and 
important  application  is  to  the  minute  and 
apparently  trivial  details  of  daily  life. 

The  second  great  division  of  my  subject  — 
I  've  got  it  written  out  on  a  piece  of  paper,  so 
that  I  can  be  systematic  —  was.  Being  Honest. 
No  woman  who  is  not  a  fool  tells  her  husband 
everything.  The  old  fol-de-rol  talk  about 
there  being  no  secrets  between  those  who  love 
is  idiocy  and  nonsense.  What  I  mean  by  hon- 
esty is  not  your  forcing  your  husband  to  know 
every  trumpery  thing  you  have  in  mind.  I 
have  squarely  refused  to  tell  Sherman  things 
that  he  wanted  to  know:  but  I  have  always 
made  him  feel  that  I  had  reasons  for  keeping 
silent  that  were  to  be  respected.  Honesty  be- 
tween husband  and  wife  is  that  entire  integrity 
which  enforces  respect.  The  husband  must 
believe  that  his  wife  could  die  in  slow  tortures, 
but  could  n't  lie  to  him.    He  must  have  abso- 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   301 

lute  faith  in  her  deahng  with  him  without  the 
shadow  of  trickery  or  deception.  To  dwell  on 
this  would  make  my  letter  so  heavy  that  a  con- 
sideration of  extra  postage  forces  me  to  stop; 
but  the  husband  and  wife  who  do  not  believe 
in  the  honesty  of  each  other  to  each  other  must 
be  a  wretched  pair.  They  must  at  best  supply 
the  place  of  love  with  a  poor  makeshift. 

Men  —  to  come  to  the  last  item  of  my 
sermon  —  must  be  amused.  They  must  be 
amused  sometimes  against  their  will ;  and  yet 
it  is  idle  to  suppose  a  man  can  be  trained  to 
like  that  against  which  his  natural  tastes  rebel. 
If  your  husband  does  not  really  like  going  to 
the  theatre,  or  going  to  dinners,  or  any  other 
form  of  diversion,  do  not  suppose  you  can 
make  him  like  it  by  keeping  him  at  it.  You 
may  have  to  drag  him  about  somewhat  for 
the  sake  of  preventing  his  falling  into  a  rut,  or 
for  the  sake  of  keeping  yourself  sufficiently  in 
touch  with  the  world  to  be  entertaining;  but 
put  it  down  to  his  credit  as  self-denial,  and 
don't  make  the  mistake  of  thinking  he  is  really 
pleased  when  he  is  n't.  The  woman  who  is 
fond  of  social  life  when  her  husband  is  not 


302  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

should  devote  herself  to  exaggerating  every 
social  sacrifice  he  makes  for  her.  She  may  be 
able  to  bring  him  to  the  point  when  the  idea 
of  self-denial,  of  being  a  martyr,  of  having 
made  so  great  concessions  to  his  wife's  happi- 
ness, will  appeal  to  him  so  strongly  as  to  make 
him  rejoice  in  a  social  function  as  an  occasion 
on  which  he  may  add  one  more  star  to  his 
crown  of  marital  sainthood!  Sometimes,  in 
this  roundabout  way,  men  may  be  amused 
even  by  the  things  they  do  not  like! 

Be  amusing  at  home,  my  child,  whatever 
you  are  elsewhere.  Tell  your  husband  the 
funny  story  you  heard  at  luncheon,  the  news 
you  picked  up  in  the  course  of  your  calls,  the 
good  thing  you  read.  The  worst  possible  mis- 
take you  can  make  in  regard  to  any  man  you 
marry  is  to  suppose  —  this  is  what  I  said 
pages  back,  I  don't  remember  just  where,  and 
at  any  rate  I  must  repeat  it  to  enforce  it  on 
your  mind  —  that  his  love  will  last.  It  will 
not;  it  has  to  be  recreated,  and  the  triumph 
of  womanhood  is  to  recreate  it  as  often  as  it 
dies,  just  as  the  sun  again  and  again  makes  a 
new  day. 


A  WORLDLY   GODMOTHER    303 

I  consider  that  rather  a  poetic  flourish,  and 
I  should  stop  with  it,  only  I  am  afraid  you  will 
rebel  against  my  saying  love  has  to  be  recre- 
ated; so  I  will  put  it  another  way,  and  say 
that  in  the  natural  course  of  earthly  events  love 
would  die,  and  it  is  the  part  of  the  wife  to 
nourish  it  until  with  it  grows  up  a  friendship, 
a  comradeship,  a  mutual  necessity  of  husband 
and  wife  for  each  other,  which  lasts  as  long  as 
life.  Put  it  any  way  you  please,  so  long  as  you 
realize  and  in  your  conduct  of  life  recognize 
that  the  love  of  your  husband  is  a  thing  to  be 
looked  after  with  at  least  as  much  and  as  con- 
stant care  as  the  style  of  your  gowns,  and  that 
it  must  be  watered  and  tended  like  a  choice 
plant  if  it  is  to  be  kept  alive. 

Heavens!  How  flowery  I  am  getting,  and 
how  my  metaphors  mix  themselves  in  spite  of 
me !  The  theme  is  too  big  for  me ;  I  shall  never 
write  my  great  book  on  husbands.  But  bring 
Mr.  Ashmore  on  a  visit  as  soon  after  you  are 
married  as  possible,  and  let  me  look  him  over. 
I  can  then  tell  you  more  in  an  hour  than  I 
could  write  in  a  week.  Men  are  all  alike,  my 
dear,  —  of  course  after  their  individual  kinds; 


304  THE   COUNSELS   OF 

and  women  are  all  different.  That  gives  us 
an  enormous  advantage,  and  if  we  were  only 
clever  enough  to  use  this,  we  might  easily  and 
absolutely  rule  the  world.  However,  we  do 
come  fairly  near  to  doing  that,  as  it  is.  We  can 
classify  men,  and  know  how  they  are  likely  to 
act,  while  they  are  always  in  the  dark  until 
they  have  taken  each  distinct  woman  and 
studied  her  by  herself;  and  by  the  time  they 
know  anything  about  her,  very  likely  she  has 
completely  changed,  or  it  is  too  late  for  the 
knowledge  to  be  of  much  use  anyway.  And 
the  beauty  of  it  is  that  we  can't  spoil  things 
by  telling  the  men  all  about  ourselves.  We 
should  be  fools  enough  to  do  it  when  we  are 
in  love,  but  fortunately  we  can't,  for  we  don't 
know ! 

A  matrimonial  world  is  like  England, 
always  best  under  the  feminine  rule ;  and  you 
shall  have  a  fair  chance  to  rule  your  world, 
my  child,  if  you  will  come,  and  act  on  my 
advice.  I  do  not  in  the  least  mind  boasting, 
or  seeming  conceited,  because  I  know  I  can 
make  my  promises  good.  Come  early,  before 
your  matrimonial  habits  are  settled,  for  I  am 


A   WORLDLY   GODMOTHER   305 

anxious  you  should  begin  well.  If  you  will  be 
guided,  though  I  say  it  who  should  leave  it  to 
others  to  say,  you  will  have  reason  all  your  life 
long  to  bless  the  Fates  that,  whatever  else  they 
did  or  did  not  do  for  you,  they  blessed  your  lot 
with  a  worldly  godmother! 


^be  Ritaetisilie  prcsiS 

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